Ardian Semiconductor, a private equity company dedicated to semiconductor company investment, has made its fourth investment – a minority stake in Vsora, a French designer of AI inference accelerators.

“Ardian Semiconductor’s investment gives us the means to accelerate the deployment of Jotunn8 (pictured) – in pursuit of one clear ambition: to make Vsora a global leader in AI inference,” says Khaled Maleej, Vsora’s CEO. Jotunn8  taped out last October.

Founded in 2015, Vsora is focused on solving the “memory wall” challenge in accelerators used for AI inference workloads.

The company says it has developed a highly differentiated architecture optimised for AI inference, delivering significant improvements in total cost of ownership, latency, and power efficiency.

The company claims to be the most advanced European player addressing the market opportunity for AI accelerators optimized for inference applications having secured its position in the most advanced semiconductor supply chains.

It is also a member of the AION consortium, which is led by Ardian, Artefact, Bull, Capgemini, EDF, the iliad Group, Orange and Scaleway, and aims to launch an ambitious bid under the European Union’s AI Gigafactories initiative.

Ardian invested alongside management, existing shareholders, and new strategic and financial investors.

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