The French company SiPearl (Silicon Pearl) raised a total of €90M ($99 Million) in the Series A round funding. These funds will allow the commercialization of the High-Performance Computing (HPC) processor Rhea at the beginning of 2024. The processor is able to work with any third-party accelerator, such as GPU, AI, or quantum.
It is expected that other investors would also join at the end of 2023, in addition to the current ones, which are Arm, Atos Group, the European Innovation Council (EIC) Fund, and the French State. Furthermore, this funding also includes a convertible debt of up to €25M from the European Investment Bank (EIB), and €20.5M grants from the EU and France, which increases the total financing to €110.5M.
As said by the CEO and founder of SiPearl, Philippe Notton, “Historically lagging behind the US and China, Europe has become a global leader in HPC thanks to the EuroHPC initiative, ranking for the first time two machines among the four most powerful supercomputers in the world, with LUMI in Finland and Leonardo in Italy,”, adding that “The arrival on the market of SiPearl’s microprocessor Rhea, which will power European supercomputers with a limited environmental footprint, will be another decisive step for Europe’s technological independence and sovereignty. We would like to thank the European Union’s innovation programs, which have championed us all along the way, and the investors who have joined us in this first round of financing for contributing to our success.”
SiPearl is a French company that designs high-performance, low-power microprocessors. Rhea will allow European supercomputers to reach exascale computing, while reducing the energy demand. The company has already been working with AMD, Intel, and Nvidia for linking to GPUs and cooperated with the British AI intelligence processor supplier GraphCore. Currently, SiPearl is the employer of 130 people in France, Germany, and Spain, and has plans to increase this number to over 1,000 by the end of 2025.
