Paris: SiPearl, the European startup focused on developing energy-efficient processors for supercomputing and artificial intelligence (AI), has successfully completed the final 32 million euros tranche of its 130 million euros Series A funding round. (1 euro = RM4.96)

According to BERNAMA News Agency, this Series A round is the largest ever for a fabless semiconductor company in Europe, as stated by SiPearl. The latest tranche of funding included contributions from existing investors, the EIC Fund and The French State, via French Tech Souverainet©, which is part of France 2030. Notably, it also received new participation from Taiwanese private equity firm Cathay Venture, marking the firm’s first investment in France.

Founded in January 2020 under the European Processor Initiative consortium, SiPearl was initially seed-funded by the European Union. The company aims to reclaim Europe’s leadership in advanced processor technologies. With a team of 200 across France, Spain, and Italy, and a sovereign semiconductor design infrastructure based in France, SiPearl recently achieved the tape-out of its flagship chip, Rhea1. This processor, constructed with over 61 billion transistors and 80 Arm Neoverse V1 cores, is now in production at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC).

The Rhea1 processor will power the CPU cluster of JUPITER, Europe’s first exascale supercomputer, owned by EuroHPC JU and operated by Jlich Supercomputing Centre in Germany. This chip plays a crucial role in ensuring Europe’s technological sovereignty and competitiveness in the realm of high-performance computing.

The funds from the Series A round will be used to accelerate the industrialisation of Rhea1 and to support research and development for next-generation processors targeted at supercomputing and new market segments such as data centres, AI, and enterprises. These developments come ahead of the launch of Series B in a few weeks.