Imec spins out Vertical Compute memory chip firm in $20.5M deal

European Imec.xpand creates memory chip company Vertical calculation in a seed investment round worth $20.5 million.

Founded by CEO Sylvain Dubois (ex-Google) and CTO Sébastien Couet (ex-imec), today announced that it has successfully closed a seed investment of 20.5 million dollars, or 20 million euros .

The funding 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 new vertically integrated memory and compute technology, paving the way for a new generation of AI applications.

Vertical Compute’s technology will have a transformative impact, enabling next-generation applications with unparalleled efficiency and privacy. By minimizing data movement and bringing big data closer to computing, the innovation ensures energy savings of up to 80%, paves the way for hyper-personalized AI solutions and eliminates the need for data transfers. data remotely, thereby protecting user privacy.

“Memory technologies face limits in density and performance scaling, while processor performance continues to increase. 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,” said Sébastien Couet, CTO of Vertical Compute, in a statement.

Tackling the memory wall

Rapid advances in large language models and generative AI are transforming virtually every industry at an unprecedented pace. However, these large-scale AI models still rely heavily on complex cloud infrastructure and high-bandwidth memories, resulting in data transfer latency, high power consumption, and data sending sensitive data to remote servers.

Edge computing can solve these problems, but inferring 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 CPU or GPU caches, is fast but very small and expensive. Dynamic random access memory (DRAM), the main memory of computer systems, is larger but expensive and power-consuming. The evolution of memory technologies in terms of density and performance is slowing while processor speeds and market needs continue to increase, causing a significant bottleneck.

This problem is rapidly worsening due to the growing demand for AI workloads, requiring rapid access to large amounts of data. Overcoming this memory wall is crucial to advancing AI inference.

Innovate with Vertical Compute Chiplet technology

The convergence of large-scale AI models and edge computing requires a transformative shift in how data is processed. Vertical Compute will seize this opportunity by developing chipset-based solutions, which take a modular approach to chip design, leveraging a new way of storing bits in a high aspect ratio vertical structure. The concept behind Vertical Compute’s core patented technology was invented by Sébastien Couet, former director of Imec’s magnetic program. The main innovation lies in the integration of vertical data paths above the calculation units. It has the potential to outperform DRAM in terms of density, cost and power, reducing data movements from centimeters to nanometers. This promising technology, combined with an ambitious commercialization plan, led to the creation of this new semiconductor company.

“The rise of data-intensive applications like generative AI requires a radical new approach to transferring data between computing cores and memory units. Our solution is designed to overcome the fundamental scalability limitations of memory technologies by taking a vertical approach. We are committed to unlocking the full potential of large language models at the edge without any compromise,” said Sylvain Dubois, CEO of Vertical Compute, in a statement.

“We want to recruit the best from all over Europe, and finally put Europe at the forefront in tech,” Dubois said.

Drive recruitment and growth

Vertical Compute is headquartered in Louvain-La-Neuve (BE), with its main R&D offices in Louvain (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 chipset-based technology.

This seed investment round highlights the confidence in the capabilities of the management team and the disruptive potential of this revolutionary technology. We couldn’t be more excited to collaborate with Sylvain, Sébastien and their team and help them achieve their ambitious goals,” said Tom Vanhoutte of Imec.xpand, in a statement.

“We are confident that with the continued 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 conviction,” said Patrick Vandenameele, co-COO at Imec, in a statement.

Vertical Compute was founded in 2024 to solve the memory bottleneck in computer systems.

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