Samsung Backs Dutch AI Chip Startup Euclyd in $231 Million Series A Funding Round
Samsung and other major investors backed Dutch semiconductor startup Euclyd with $231 million to develop AI inference chips that challenge Nvidia's GPU dominance. The company plans to launch physical chip systems in 2028 and serve thousands of enterprise customers by 2030.
Samsung Leads Major AI Chip Investment
Euclyd, a Dutch semiconductor startup, raised $231 million in a Series A round backed by Samsung, alongside Somerset Capital Partners, the Scaleup Europe Fund managed by EQT, and Innovation Industries. Founded in 2024 by Bernardo Kastrup and Atul Sinha at High Tech Campus Eindhoven in the Netherlands, Euclyd is building chip systems designed to reduce the energy consumption and cost of running AI models.
Focus on AI Inference, Not Training
The company's roadmap targets AI inference — the stage at which a trained model responds to queries — rather than the model training workload. Euclyd is designing its chips to reduce the energy requirements and operating costs associated with AI inference, and plans to sell physical rack systems directly to enterprises that want secure, self-hosted AI inference while also licensing its intellectual property to third-party chip designers.
Breaking Nvidia's Hardware Dominance
Dutch startup Euclyd, which is building a chip for AI inference that seeks to rival Nvidia, has raised $230 million funding round. The investment arrives amid a broader market push for hardware alternatives to Nvidia's dominant graphic processing units as companies race to build customized infrastructure for artificial intelligence workloads. The funding arrives as investment in AI chip alternatives to Nvidia has grown.
Samsung's Strategic Role and Timeline
Peter Wennink, chairman of Euclyd's board and former president and chief executive officer of ASML, said in a statement that Europe's semiconductor capabilities position the company to compete globally, stating "EUCLYD can transform those strengths into a globally competitive AI infrastructure platform". Bernardo Kastrup told CNBC that the company expects to launch its physical chip systems in 2028 and serve thousands of enterprise customers by 2030. Samsung will provide more than financial backing, with Euclyd planning to use Samsung's manufacturing capacity, supply-chain network, and memory engineering expertise to move its architecture from design into production.