• Vertical Compute, a groundbreaking European deep-tech semiconductor startup, has announced the successful closure of a €20 million seed investment round.
• The company aims to revolutionize the future of computing by solving the critical “memory wall” bottleneck, delivering major advancements for the tech industry and enabling highly tangible applications for consumers in the near future.
• The funding round, led by imec.xpand and supported by Eurazeo, XAnge, Vector Gestion, and imec, will propel the development of a vertically integrated memory and compute technology that unlocks unprecedented potential for AI applications.
Louvain-La-Neuve (Belgium), January 14 2025 -Vertical Compute (www.verticalcompute.com), founded by CEO Sylvain Dubois (ex-Google) and CTO Sebastien Couet (ex-imec), today announced that it successfully closed a seed investment round of €20 million. The round was led by imec.xpand and supported by a strong investor base including Eurazeo, XAnge, Vector Gestion and imec. The funding will support Vertical Compute’s ambition to develop a novel vertical integrated memory and compute technology, unlocking a new generation of AI applications
Unlocking the Future of AI with Verticality
Vertical Compute’s technology will have a transformative impact, enabling next-generation applications with unparalleled efficiency and privacy. By minimizing data movement and bringing large data closer to computation, the innovation ensures energy savings of up to 80%, unlocks hyper-personalized AI solutions, and eliminates the need for remote data transfers, protecting user privacy.
“Memory technologies face limitations in both density and performance scaling, while processor performance continues to surge. The extreme data access requirements of AI workloads exacerbate this challenge, making it imperative to overcome the memory wall to enable the next wave of AI innovations. We believe going Vertical is the path to 100X gains”, says Sébastien Couet, CTO of Vertical Compute.
Tackling the Memory Wall
The rapid advancements in large language models and generative AI are transforming virtually all industries at an unprecedented pace. However, these large-scale AI models still heavily rely on complex cloud infrastructure and high bandwidth memories, leading to data transfer latency, high energy consumption and sending sensitive data to distant servers. Edge computing can address these issues, but inferencing large AI models on smartphones, PCs or smart home devices faces significant cost, power and scalability constraints.
The big underlying problem is the ‘memory wall’. Static Random Access Memory (SRAM), integrated as caches of the CPU or GPU, is fast but very small and expensive. Dynamic Random-Access Memory (DRAM), the main memory of compute systems, is larger but expensive and energy-consuming. The scaling of both memory technologies in density and performance is slowing down while processor speeds and market needs keep increasing, causing a significant bottleneck. This problem is rapidly escalating due to the surging demand for AI workloads, requiring vast amounts of data to be accessed quickly. Overcoming this memory wall is crucial for advancing AI inference
Innovating with Vertical Compute’s Chiplet Technology
Vertical Compute is headquartered in Louvain-La-Neuve (BE), with its main R&D offices in Leuven (BE), Grenoble (FR) and Nice (FR). The company is recruiting an elite team of engineers to support its ambitious R&D goals and accelerate the development and commercialization of its chiplet-based technology.
“We want to recruit the very best from all over Europe, and finally put Europe at the forefront in terms of tech”, adds Sylvain Dubois. “This seed investment round highlights the confidence in the leadership team’s capabilities and the disruptive potential of this game-changing technology. We could not be more excited to collaborate with Sylvain, Sebastien and their team and to help them to achieve their ambitious goals”, says Tom Vanhoutte from imec.xpand.
“We are confident that, with the ongoing support of our teams and ecosystem, Vertical Compute can become a disruptor in the semiconductor industry. The strong international investor base shows that we are not alone in this belief”, says Patrick Vandenameele, co-Chief Operating Officer at imec.
About Vertical Compute
Vertical Compute (www.verticalcompute.com) is a European deep tech startup focused on developing a game-changing vertically integrated memory technology. Founded in 2024, the company aims to solve the memory bottleneck and to unlock the full potential of data-intensive applications. With a strong leadership team and a clear vision, Vertical Compute is set to revolutionize the future of computing.
About imec
Imec is a world-leading research and innovation center in nanoelectronics and digital technologies. Imec leverages its state-of-the-art R&D infrastructure and its team of more than 5,500 employees and top researchers, for R&D in advanced semiconductor and system scaling, silicon photonics, artificial intelligence, beyond 5G communications and sensing technologies, and in application domains such as health and life sciences, mobility, industry 4.0, agrofood, smart cities, sustainable energy, education, … Imec unites world-industry leaders across the semiconductor value chain, Flanders-based and international tech, pharma, medical and ICT companies, start-ups, and academia and knowledge centers. Imec is headquartered in Leuven (Belgium), and has research sites across Belgium, in the Netherlands, the UK and the USA, and representation in 3 continents. In 2023, imec’s revenue (P&L) totaled 941 million euro. Further information on imec can be found at www.imec-int.com.
