SiPearl, the French company building Rhea, the energy-efficient high-performance computing (HPC) microprocessor for exascale2 supercomputers, has raised €90 million in financing for the first closing of its Series A. This funding round, with the participation of key industry partners as well as European and French public investors, will enable SiPearl to commercialise Rhea in early 2024. Rhea is the world’s first energy-efficient HPC microprocessor designed to work with any third-party accelerator (GPUs, artificial intelligence and quantum). Processing huge volumes of strategic data in a fraction of a second with low energy consumption, SiPearl’s microprocessor will ensure Europe’s technological sovereignty by solving major challenges in medical research, artificial intelligence, security, energy management and climate change mitigation, all with a lower environmental footprint.
SiPearl’s first Series A round has raised €90 million. The investors are:
- Arm, a global leader in semiconductor design and silicon intellectual property development
- Atos Group, through its Eviden business for digital, big data and security activities
- The European Innovation Council (EIC) Fund (€15 million, already announced)
- The French government, via French Tech Souveraineté, which is part of the France 2030 investment plan led by the General Secretariat for Investment (attached to the Prime Minister’s Office).
The financing includes up to €25 million in convertible debt from the European Investment Bank (EIB).
Additional investors are expected to join the round by the end of the year.
This first funding milestone brings SiPearl’s total financing to €110.5 million, including €20.5 million worth of European Union and French grants provided through the European Processor Initiative (EPI) consortium project, the EIC Accelerator programme and the Ile-de-France region.
Using the Arm® Neoverse V1 platform, Rhea will be the world’s first HPC microprocessor designed to work with any third-party accelerator, such as GPUs, specialised chips for artificial intelligence or quantum accelerators. Formal cooperation agreements with GPU providers (AMD, Intel and NVIDIA) and an artificial intelligence processor provider (Graphcore) have already been announced. With optimised energy efficiency, Rhea will halve power consumption for equivalent computing power.
While HPC has traditionally been used on site for medical research, nuclear simulations and weather forecasts, it is now increasingly being used in the cloud for artificial intelligence model training and other data-intensive applications.
With global markets in sight, Rhea will first be used in European supercomputers that will reach exascale power with backdoor-free security and less energy consumption. SiPearl will thus contribute to Europe’s technological sovereignty by addressing major challenges in medical research, artificial intelligence, security, energy management and climate change mitigation, while limiting its environmental footprint.
SiPearl was created in June 2019 with the backing of the EPI consortium’s project addressing the returns of high-performance and low-power microprocessor technologies in Europe. As part of the Horizon 2020 programme3, the company is at the heart of the Euro High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU), which is deploying world-class infrastructure for exascale supercomputing in Europe with a budget of over €8 billion. A fabless company, SiPearl has outsourced the manufacturing of Rhea to TSMC, the world’s leading independent semiconductor manufacturer, for commercialisation in early 2024. SiPearl has 130 employees in France (Maisons-Laffitte (its headquarters), Grenoble, Massy and Sophia Antipolis), Germany (Duisburg) and Spain (Barcelona). Its target is to have over 1 000 employees by the end of 2025.
“Historically lagging behind the United States and China, Europe has become a global leader in high-performance computing thanks to the EuroHPC initiative, with two European machines ranking for the first time among the four most powerful supercomputers in the world — LUMI in Finland and Leonardo in Italy. The arrival on the market of SiPearl’s microprocessor Rhea, which will power European supercomputers with a limited environmental footprint, will be another huge step for Europe’s technological independence and sovereignty. We would like to thank the European Union’s innovation programmes, which have championed us all along the way, and the investors who have joined us in this first round of financing for contributing to our success,” said Philippe Notton, chief executive officer and founder of SiPearl.
“From the tiniest sensor through to HPC, it takes leadership across the computing spectrum to support the volume of data being created and processed today,” said Mohamed Awad, senior vice president and general manager of the infrastructure line of business at Arm. “Arm is enabling high-performance, energy-efficient processing around the globe with its Neoverse platforms, and we are fully supportive of SiPearl’s work to develop Rhea, powered by Neoverse V1, into an HPC system that is ready to take on some of the world’s biggest computing challenges.”
“As a European leader in the design, manufacture and deployment of supercomputing infrastructure, Atos’s Eviden business has been playing a critical role in various European technological initiatives, such as the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking and the European Processor Initiative, to support the digital and economic sovereignty of Europe,” said Emmanuel Le Roux, corporate senior vice president and head of advanced computing, HPC and AI for Eviden at Atos Group. “Microprocessing units hold the key to the future of HPC, which is why Atos Group welcomes and supports the Europe-grown microprocessor that is extending and consolidating the capacity to deliver European high-performance computing designed to tackle the biggest challenges in life sciences, weather forecasting and industrial simulations.”
“The European Union has backed SiPearl from day one. The company has benefited from a variety of grants as well as the vast European market opened up by the EuroHPC initiative. The EIC Fund’s investment is the natural continuation of this long-standing effort to develop a home-grown European HPC technology that can compete with the very best in the world,” said Hermann Hauser, EIC Fund board member.
“The EIB has been following the progress of SiPearl for the last two years and was the first institution to commit to financing SiPearl. This is an illustration of the Bank’s strong dedication to supporting innovation and European sovereignty,” said European Investment Bank Vice-President Ambroise Fayolle.
“France 2030 is particularly pleased to be supporting SiPearl for this fundraising round, which will enable the company to continue developing its disruptive technologies,” said Bruno Bonnell, secretary general for investment in charge of France 2030.
“Developing a strong European HPC supply chain with energy-efficient components and technologies is key to achieving digital sovereignty in Europe while promoting more sustainable supercomputing. The success of SiPearl today is also the success of the European Processor Initiative, one of the research projects funded by the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking,” said Anders Dam Jensen, executive director of the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking.
Participants
Financial counsel: Silverpeak (Jean-Michel Deligny; Pietro Strada)
Company legal counsels: Aston Avocats (Olivier Sanviti; Mariam Tourabaly), Orrick (Olivier Vuillod; Lea Fiorenza)
Investor advisors:
Arm: Bird & Bird (Emmanuelle Porte)
Atos Group: Darrois Villey Maillot Brochier (Jean-Baptiste de Martigny)
EIC: Bignon Lebray (Alexandre Ghesquière)
EIB: Clifford Chance (Maroussia Cuny)
French Tech Souveraineté: Degroux Brugère (Jérémie Swiecznik)
Vendor due diligence: Deloitte Finance (Thomas Fischer)
Background information
European Investment Bank
The EIB is the European Union’s long-term financing institution, owned by its Member States. It finances sound investments that contribute to EU policy goals, including social and territorial cohesion, competitiveness, and a just transition to climate neutrality. We support projects in infrastructure, innovation, climate and environment, and small and medium-sized enterprises. In 2022, the EIB signed €10 billion in new financing for projects in France.
SiPearl
SiPearl is building the world’s first energy-efficient HPC microprocessor designed to work with any third-party accelerator (GPUs, artificial intelligence and quantum). This new generation of microprocessors will first target the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking ecosystem, which is deploying world-class supercomputing infrastructure in Europe to solve major challenges in medical research, artificial intelligence, security, energy management and climate, while reducing its environmental footprint.
SiPearl is working in close collaboration with its 27 partners from the European Processor Initiative (EPI) consortium made up of leading names from the scientific community, supercomputing centres and industry — its stakeholders, future clients and end users.
SiPearl employs 130 people in France (Maisons-Laffitte, Grenoble, Massy and Sophia Antipolis), Germany (Duisburg) and Spain (Barcelona).
European Innovation Council Fund
The European Innovation Council Fund is an initiative of the European Commission. The fund invests in all technologies and verticals, and all EU countries and countries associated with Horizon Europe. It provides the investment component of EIC Accelerator blended finance.
The EIC Fund aims to fill a critical financing gap. Its main purpose is to support companies in the development and commercialisation of disruptive technologies, bridging with and crowding in market players, and further sharing risk by building a large network of capital providers and strategic partners suitable for co-investments and follow-on funding.
The fund pays particular attention to empowering and supporting female founders and strives to reduce the innovation divide among EU countries.
Eviden(1)
Eviden brings together Atos’s digital, big data and security business lines. It strives to be a global leader in data-driven, trusted and sustainable digital transformation. As a next-generation digital business at the forefront worldwide in digital, cloud, data, advanced computing and security, it brings extensive expertise for all industries in more than 53 countries. By uniting unique high-end technologies across the full digital continuum with 57 000 world-class talents, Eviden expands the possibilities of technologies for enterprises and public authorities, helping them to build their digital future. Eviden is an Atos Group business with an annual revenue of around €5 billion.
(1) The Eviden business is operated through the following brands: Agarik, Alia Consulting, AppCentrica, ATHEA, Atos Syntel, Bull, Cloudamize, Cloudreach, Cryptovision, DataSentics, digital.security, Eagle Creek, EcoAct, Edifixio, Energy4U, Engage ESM, Forensik, IDEAL GRP, IDnomic, In Fidem, Ipsotek, Maven Wave, Miner & Kasch, Motiv, Nimbix, Processia, Profit4SF, science+computing, SEC Consult, Visual BI, Worldgrid, X-Perion, zData.
Legal mentions: Eviden™ and the Eviden logo are trademarks of Bull S.A.S © 2023 Bull S.A.S.
The France 2030 investment plan
France 2030 reflects a dual ambition to transform key sectors of the French economy (energy, automotive, aeronautics and space) through technological innovation, and to position France not just as a player, but as a leader in the world of tomorrow. From basic research to the emergence of an idea, to the production of a new product or service, France 2030 supports the entire life cycle of innovation up to its industrialisation.
€54 billion will be invested so that French companies, universities and research organisations can successfully make the transition in these strategic sectors. The challenge is to enable them to respond competitively to the environmental and competitiveness challenges of the coming world, and to create the future champions of our sectors of excellence. France 2030 is defined by two cross-cutting objectives: to devote 50% of its spending to decarbonising the economy, and 50% to emerging, innovative players, without spending that harms the environment (in line with the Do No Significant Harm principle).
The plan will be implemented collectively, designed and deployed in consultation with economic, academic, local and European players to determine the strategic directions and flagship actions. Project leaders are invited to submit their applications via open, demanding and selective procedures in order to benefit from the State’s support.
France 2030 is managed by the General Secretariat for Investment on behalf of the Prime Minister and implemented by the French Agency for Ecological Transition (ADEME), the National Research Agency (ANR), the Public Investment Bank (Bpifrance) and the Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations (CDC).
French Tech Souveraineté
Launched in June 2020 by the French government, French Tech Souveraineté is an investment plan managed by Bpifrance that seeks to protect and promote French businesses. €650 million has been earmarked to support French technology companies developing future technologies of a sovereign nature, which may fall prey to large foreign players or be overtaken by competitors who manage to finance themselves better.
EuroHPC Joint Undertaking
The European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) is a joint initiative created in 2018. It pools together the resources of the European Union, 33 European countries and three private partners with the ambition of making Europe a world leader in supercomputing.
To this end, the EuroHPC JU is procuring and installing supercomputers across Europe. No matter where in Europe they are located, European scientists and users from the public sector and industry can benefit from these EuroHPC supercomputers, which rank among the world’s most powerful. In parallel, the EuroHPC JU is funding an ambitious research and innovation programme to develop a full European supercomputing supply chain, from processors and software to applications to be run on these supercomputers and know-how to develop strong European expertise.
2 Exascale: 1 billion billion calculations per second.
3 Specific grant agreement No 826647.