Startup Axelera AI announced Wednesday that Inder Singh, former CFO of Arm, has joined the company’s board of directors. His duties include expansion of the startup’s investor base and growing the company’s US business.
With its focus on edge AI, Axelera has made quick gains after just two years, something Singh noted in a statement provided to Fierce Electronics. “It’s early days of course for the company and market, which makes it more exciting as each new month seems to bring yet another milestone moment,” he said.
In an interview with Fierce, co-founder and CEO Fabrizio Del Maffeo said Singh arrives at a pivotal moment, adding muscle to an already experienced board. The company launched in July 2021 and has raised $50 million from investors. In September, Axelera shipped to early customers its Metis AI hardware and software platform, which includes a Voyager SDK and a Metis AI processing unit.
Singh is expected to be based in New York, while Axelera is based in Eindhoven, Netherlands. The company has 140 workers in 15 countries.
The Metis AI platform comes in different form factors like PCIe cards, M.2 modules and vision-ready systems with a starting price of 149 euros (about $157) for its AI M.2 module, with 512 MB of LPDDR4X dedicated memory.
A PCIe AI Edge accelerator card with a single Metis AIPU, starts at 199 euros, offering up to 214 TOPS, while an accelerator card with 4 Metis AIPUs with 856 TOPS starts at 499 euros.
The Metis platform with Axelera’s second chip since its start already has attracted 12 customers and another 850 customers making inquiries, said Del Maffeo in an interview. “It’s clear to use that a market [for edge AI] is out there,” he said.
Nvidia makes products that work at the edge such as its Aegis, Jetson and RTX A4000 lines, but Axelera is offering similar functionality at “a fraction of the cost,” he said. In one simple comparison, an Nvidia single slot RTX A4000 graphics card from Dell sells for nearly $500.
Metis AI will be suitable all types of applications with cameras involved, such as surveillance, access control, traffic control, retail and more. It will even be “complementary to what Intel does” with its AI PC concept, Del Maffeo said.
The Metis platform will be generally available in second quarter 2022. In late 2024, Axelera is planning a product that focused on generative AI and chatGPT. A bid for an IPO could come as early as 2026, he said.
Nvidia and Intel are potential competitors but also startups like Hailo and SiMa.ai. Nvidia, Intel and AMD are mostly focused on the cloud for massive, and expensive, AI processing, Del Maffeo argued. “They are not optimized to run at the edge,” he said. “You cannot put a server at the edge in a car.”
In rough terms, Del Maffeo said Axelera has found a way to put a small computer element inside memory, which reduces the area and results in a smaller cost with less silicon.
Del Maffeo said Axelera has started with what customers said they need, and then progressed to an edge AI platform. “The technical decisions are driven by customers and the market,” he added.
AI, including Generative AI is expected to grow at a dramatic rate in coming years. IDC recently forecast spending on GenAI solutions, with software, hardware and services, is expected to grow by 73% a year to reach $143 billion in 2027. GenAI spending will account for 28% of overall AI spending in 2027, up from about 9% in 2023. The forecast did not break out edge AI from cloud AI, although, as Axelera has acknowledged, edge AI is in its early stages.
RELATED: AI on PCs will be ‘hugely transformative,’ given some assumptions: Hamblen