Euclyd raises over $230M to develop AI agent chips, adds ex-ASML CEO to board

The round drew other institutional backers, including imec.xpand, a fund associated with the Imec nanotechnology research center. Euclyd is headquartered at High Tech Campus Eindhoven, a research hub a few miles from ASML's head office.

Euclyd says craftwerk is designed to run AI agents. That indicates the chip will include circuits optimized for inference rather than training. AI agents require inference accelerators and CPUs that can run their tools, so either craftwerk or CWS is likely to include central processing unit cores.

According to Euclyd, craftwerk's computing module will be an application-specific integrated circuit, or ASIC. The chip will also feature an innovative memory architecture. Euclyd said it plans processor-memory co-design, indicating its RAM architecture will be specifically optimized to work with its ASIC.

Multiple custom memory designs have emerged in the AI ecosystem in recent years. They aim to replace the standard HBM memory that ships with today's graphics processing units. An HBM module comprises multiple memory dies stacked atop one another. That stack is placed on a base die, which is installed on the host GPU. The base die functions as the interface between the GPU and the HBM module. Last month, Nvidia debuted a custom memory architecture called NVHBM. It moves certain circuits from the base die to the HBM stack above it and shrinks the hardware channels that move data through the base die. Nvidia says those changes can free up 30% of a GPU's surface area, enabling engineers to add more computing circuits. Startup d-Matrix Inc. has also developed a custom memory architecture for its chips. The design uses SRAM, a high-speed memory variety, to carry out some inference calculations. Computations that cannot be performed in-memory are sent to a set of processing cores likewise designed by d-Matrix. The company says its chips are more power-efficient than traditional GPUs.

Euclyd is likewise prioritizing power efficiency with craftwerk. The company says the chip is designed for a future in which advanced AI is no longer constrained by infrastructure cost, power availability or geography. Euclyd also hopes to tackle the so-called memory wall, an engineering challenge that complicates efforts to speed up AI chips. It relates to the rate at which data moves between a GPU's computing and HBM modules.

Euclyd's partnership with Samsung, one of the lead investors in its funding round, could be conducive to its engineering efforts. Samsung is one of the world's top HBM suppliers. Last month, it debuted a technology that makes it possible to place HBM memory directly atop a GPU's computing circuits. Today, chip designers implement memory dies and computing modules side-by-side.

According to CNBC, Euclyd plans to launch its silicon in 2028. The company intends to sell the hardware to data center operators and license the underlying technologies to fellow chipmakers. Euclyd reportedly hopes to gain thousands of enterprise customers by 2030.