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

Europe’s Imec.xpand is spinning out memory chip firm Vertical Compute in a seed investment round worth $20.5 million.

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

The 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 a novel vertical integrated memory and compute technology, unlocking 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 large data closer to computation, the innovation ensures energy savings of up to 80%, unlocks hyper-personalized AI solutions, and eliminates the need for remote data transfers, protecting user privacy.

“Memory technologies face limitations in both density and performance scaling, while processor performance continues to surge. 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

The rapid advancements in large language models and generative AI are transforming virtually all industries at an unprecedented pace. However, these large-scale AI models still heavily rely on complex cloud infrastructure and high bandwidth memories, leading to data transfer latency, high energy consumption and sending sensitive data to distant servers.

Edge computing can address these issues, but inferencing 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 caches of the CPU or GPU, is fast but very small and expensive. Dynamic Random-Access Memory (DRAM), the main memory of compute systems, is larger but expensive and energy-consuming. The scaling of both memory technologies in density and performance is slowing down while processor speeds and market needs keep increasing, causing a significant bottleneck.

This problem is rapidly escalating due to the surging demand for AI workloads, requiring vast amounts of data to be accessed quickly. Overcoming this memory wall is crucial for advancing AI inference.

Innovating with Vertical Compute’s Chiplet Technology

The convergence of large-scale AI models and edge computing calls for a transformative shift in the way data is processed. Vertical Compute will capture this opportunity by developing chiplet-based solutions — which take a modular approach to chip design — leveraging a new way to store bits in a high aspect ratio vertical structure. The concept behind Vertical Compute’s core patented technology has been invented by Sebastien Couet, Imec’s former Magnetic Program Director. The core innovation resides in the integration of vertical data lanes on top of computation units. It has the potential to outperform DRAM in terms of density, cost and energy, by reducing data movements from centimeters to nanometers. This promising technology, coupled with an ambitious commercialization plan, has led to the creation of this new semiconductor venture.

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

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

Driving Recruitment and Growth

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

This seed investment round highlights the confidence in the leadership team’s capabilities and the disruptive potential of this game-changing technology. We could not be more excited to collaborate with Sylvain, Sebastien and their team and to help them to achieve their ambitious goals”, said Tom Vanhoutte from Imec.xpand, in a statement.

“We are confident that, with the ongoing 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 belief,” 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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