Ex-Qualcomm exec's AI chip startup Axionic raises $80M pre-seed
What's the deal? Axionic LabsDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, a Herzliya Pituah chip startup founded in June by former Qualcomm executive Assaf Touboul, is raising up to $80 million in a pre-seed round. Amplify Partners, Wing VC, and Qualcomm Ventures are leading, alongside Israeli funds Pitango, Viola, and 10DDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →.
What's the endgame? Axionic is developing a chip to run AI models and agents at the inference stage. It promises to be cheaper and more energy-efficient than Nvidia's GPUs, competing with US-based Cerebras.
Why now? Demand was strong enough that Axionic had raised $50 million before the round even closed. Touboul opened it to more investors, pushing the potential total to $80 million.
Touboul is one of the most senior Israelis to have worked at Qualcomm, where he was vice president of technology. He oversaw cellular chip development and the firm's innovation and AI labs, spearheading ultra-low-power analog AI chips and model compression work while registering dozens of patents.
He has built an international structure for Axionic: a US company with an R&D center in Herzliya Pituah and a UK-registered entity. The company employs about 20 people, 10 of them PhDs — a dense talent pool for such an early-stage chipmaker.
What could go wrong? Israel's chip sector has seen recent setbacks, including the sales of Pliops to Astera and Hailo to Microchip at losses of hundreds of millions of dollars. Cerebras, the rival Axionic targets, saw turmoil and a sharp share-price drop after its Nasdaq IPO in May.
The signal: Investors are betting that the chip industry keeps profiting even as AI software firms stay risky, with cloud giants taking on billions in debt to buy chips. The competition is shifting from costly model training — Nvidia's turf — to energy-efficient processors that run AI agents, a stage expected to absorb the bulk of future computing.
Read more: en.globes.co.il
Image credit: Sangitiana
