- VSORA collects $ 46 million to build Europe’s alternative to AI giants
- Jotunn8 -chip is targeted at lower power and higher flow
- French startup challenges Nvidia’s lead on a training -focused chip market
French chip designer VSora has collected $ 46 million in new funding as it aims to offer Europe’s most important alternative to AI processors from NVIDIA, AMD, Intel and Google.
The Paris-based startup is heavily investing in a custom-built inference processor called Jotunn8, which it plans to bring to silicon in the second half of 2025 using 5NM production on TSMC.
While Nvidia’s GPUs dominate workloads on training, VSORA is targeted at the inference with its chip, as it says, is faster and more effective where it matters.
Secure Europe’s technological AI -sovereignty
The financing round was led by Otium and a French family office with further support from OMNES Capital, Adélie Capital and European Innovation Council Fund.
Investors support VSora’s goal of separating a space in a crowded and mostly non-European market.
“In a market dominated by global giants like Nvidia, VSORA is a unique opportunity for France and Europe, home to world -class engineering,” said Gaspard de Veyrac, headmaster at Otium.
“With this funding, VSORA has the necessary tools to reshape the future of AI calculation and ensure a significant position in the global AI chip market.”
Vsora’s chip doesn’t try to be overly every taste. Unlike GPUs, which are mainly built for training models, Jotunn8 is designed just for inference, focuses on performance per day. Watts, latency time and cost per Query.
The company claims that Jotunn8 delivers more than three times the performance of current solutions while using less than half the power.
It aims at 3,200 teraflops of computing power and will target workloads such as chatgpt-style generative AI, autonomous driving and edge units.
“This funding marks a central moment of VSora as we accelerate our mission to revolutionize AI chips and ensure Europe’s technological sovereignty in AI -computing,” said VSora founder and CEO Khaled Maalej.
“It will run the completion of our technology and the launch of our production, which allows VSORA to play a crucial role as the only alternative to non-European chip designers. We are grateful for our investors’ confidence and look forward to continuing our cooperation with industry leaders to bring our chip to the market.”
