Samsung Backs Nvidia Rival Euclyd in 200 Million Euro Funding Round
Samsung and three venture funds co-led a 200 million euro Series A for Euclyd, a Dutch AI chipmaker designing inference systems unlike Nvidia GPUs. Euclyd plans commercial chip systems in 2028 and thousands of enterprise customers by 2030.
Euclyd CEO Bernardo Kastrup told CNBC exclusively that Somerset Capital Partners, the Scaleup Europe Fund managed by EQT, and Innovation Industries co-led the round alongside Samsung. The startup, founded in 2024, is designing an AI chip system for inference that uses a different architecture from GPUs, including its processor and memory architecture.
Nvidia became the world's most valuable company after its GPUs, originally designed for gaming, were repurposed for AI training and inference. The company has developed a near monopoly over the market for the highest-end chips, but some hyperscalers and 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.
'AI is becoming a foundation of economic growth, scientific discovery and national competitiveness, but its potential will remain constrained unless we fundamentally change the infrastructure beneath it,' Kastrup said.
Euclyd's systems have yet to be proven at scale in commercial deployments. The company said its silicon systems for foundational models will reduce the energy needs and costs of AI data center infrastructure, which is seeing a funding boom.
The company is targeting two revenue streams: selling hardware and physical rack systems to enterprise customers who want secure self-hosted AI inference, and selling its intellectual property to companies that want to develop their own chips based on pre-existing technology.
'Samsung can help us in more ways than money,' Kastrup said. 'They are one of the biggest memory manufacturers in the world. They do a lot of engineering, they know a lot about systems, they know the supply chain, they have a huge network.'
Euclyd aims to begin rolling out its physical chip systems in 2028, with thousands of enterprise customers being served by 2030, Kastrup told CNBC.