Despite harsh criticism of Israel's actions in Gaza by EU countries, the EU itself continues to strengthen its connections with Israel's tech sector. Only recently Israel received approval from The European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (Europe HPC), managed in Belgium, to build a supercomputer and in the long-term connect it to the European infrastructure.
Today Israeli chip company NeuReality announced the completion of a $20 million financing round, with funds from the EU's European Innovation Council (EIC) Fund, which develops hardware systems that allow data centers and supercomputers to bypass use of Nvidia's GPUs and save electricity expenditure on cooling. Varana Capital, Cleveland Avenue, Udi Angel's XT Hi-Tech and Israel's OurCrowd also participated. These funds bring the total amount raised by NeuReality to $70 million.
The EU aims to reduce dependence on US and Chinese chip companies
As far as is known, NeuReality applied to the EU grants program and received a grant of €2.5 million and subsequently the fund approached the company and asked to participate in the next financing round, planning to make its products part of the EU's investment strategy in chip companies, and in particular in chip companies that eliminate dependence on US and Chinese companies. It is believed that the EU is interested in applying the technology for military as well commercial use, as happens with US and Chinese chip companies.
NeuReality has developed, together with chip giant AMD, hardware architecture that eliminates use of Nvidia's expensive servers, which can make projects up to $500,000, and consumes less electricity. The hardware focuses on the inference stage, where companies adopt ready-made AI models, and process the existing organizational data on it. This stage is sometimes referred to as the "maintenance" or "activation" stage of AI, after it has undergone sophisticated and expensive preparation for activation, usually using Nvidia's processors. NeuReality's inference chip is developed with 7nm technology, and entered serial production at Taiwan's TSMC last year.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on March 19, 2024.
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