GoKawiilSamsung has backed a Dutch AI chipmaker in a $231 million funding round, amid a boom in investment in alternatives to Nvidia's graphic processing units.
Euclyd CEO Bernardo Kastrup told CNBC exclusively that the company's 200-million-euro Series A drew backing from Somerset Capital Partners, the Scaleup Europe Fund managed by EQT and Innovation Industries, which all co-led the round alongside Samsung.
The startup, founded in 2024, is designing an AI chip system, with different architecture to GPUs, for inference, including the processor and memory architecture.
Nvidia became the world's most valuable company after its GPUs, originally designed for gaming, were repurposed for training and using AI models, known as inference.
The company has developed a near monopoly over the market for the highest-end chips, but some hyperscalers, alongside startups, are looking to develop their own processors for AI workloads.
OpenAI announced in August that its first AI chip, the Jalapeño, had "industry-leading speed and efficiency." Google, AWS and Meta are all also developing their own AI chips.