Vertical Compute secured an additional €37 million following an earlier raise of €20 million to bring its seed round to €57 million. In just over a year, the team at Vertical Compute has successfully taped-out the company’s first test chip, integrating vertical memory stacks directly on compute logic within a single 300mm wafer manufacturing process flow — a key technical validation milestone. Quantonation led the seed round, with participation from Flanders Future Techfund (managed by the Flemish investment company PMV), Wallonie Entreprendre, Sambrinvest, Noshaq, InvestBW, Drysdale Ventures and Kima Ventures. Existing investors Eurazeo, XAnge, Vector Gestion, imec.xpand and imec also reinvested in this round, underscoring their continued confidence in the company’s roadmap. In addition, Vertical Compute secured non-dilutive funding from Flanders ́s VLAIO and BPI France, included in the total financing package.

The vertical shift to solve the memory bottleneck.
TAI is advancing at unprecedented speed, but its infrastructure is approaching systemic limits. Compute architectures built on legacy 2D memory arrays are struggling to keep pace. The resulting memory bottleneck, combined with global constraints in advanced memory supply, are driving rising costs, soaring energy consumption and increasing concentration of AI capabilities in a handful of hyperscale data centers.

“Over the coming years, supply constraints on semiconductors and memories, escalating AI infrastructure costs and energy demands will intensify tensions across industries and territories and threaten the long-term accessibility of AI beyond a limited number of dominant players. What many still describe as a ‘memory wall’ is in fact a much broader industrial turning point”, said Sylvain Dubois, co-founder & CEO of Vertical Compute.

Vertical Compute removes this bottleneck by integrating memory directly above compute logic within a single wafer manufacturing process, reducing data movement from centimeters to nanometers. This disruptive 3D approach fundamentally changes how data flows inside a chip. By stacking vertical memory elements directly on top of logic, Vertical Compute minimizes latency, drastically cuts energy consumption and eliminates the inherent inefficiencies of traditional 2D memory architectures.

Delivered through a chiplet-based approach, the technology is designed to integrate seamlessly into existing processor architectures. Rather than replacing compute cores, Vertical Compute acts as an enabling layer — enhancing CPUs, GPUs and custom AI accelerators with dramatically higher memory density and bandwidth.

“The impact is fundamental. Being able to store data vertically is like using a skyscraper instead of a single story home to house people: orders of magnitudes more people (data) and much closer commute to work – just take the elevator down! In practice, this redefines the size and power envelope required to run agentic and physical AI models with a first key unlock being on-device low power context generation use cases.”, explains Sébastien Couet, co-founder & CTO of Vertical Compute.

In just over a year after spinning out of imec, Vertical Compute has grown to 25 people, successfully taped out its first vertically integrated memory-on-logic test chip, and is now using the new seed funding to shift from validation to commercial chiplet deployment for next-gen AI platforms.

→ To better understand how Vertical Integrated Memory works and how it integrates into existing processor designs,
watch the explanatory video here.

Backed by leading deep-tech investors
Vertical Compute’s growth is supported by a coalition of international deep-tech investors with strong expertise in semiconductors, advanced materials and next-generation technologies. Their continued commitment reflects confidence in both the team’s execution and the strategic importance of next-generation AI memory systems.

“As AI scales in a generationally significant buildout, the bottleneck isn’t just compute, it’s memory and how densely we can pack it. Vertical Compute is attacking that head-on with a breakthrough high density memory architecture that’s already proving it can scale. ”, says Will Zeng, Partner at Quantonation.

“As an imec spin-off, Vertical Compute brings together world-class scientific excellence and a remarkable capacity to execute. We are convinced that this combination creates a powerful bridge from frontier research to meaningful industrial transformation”, says Tom Vanhoutte, Managing Partner at imec.xpand.

“The acceleration of AI demands paradigm-level innovation at the hardware level. Vertical Compute offers a compelling answer to this challenge and a credible pathway to broad adoption across the AI ecosystem”, says Thomas Turelier, Partner at Eurazeo.

“We believe this technology can unlock a new phase of growth for AI systems, from hyperscale data centers to edge environments. The company is building a critical enabling layer for the ecosystem. As an imec spin-off, Vertical Compute builds on decades of world-class semiconductor research rooted in Flanders — now positioned to address a global infrastructure challenge.”, says Vincent Hebbelynck, Head of Tech VC at PMV, managing FFTF.

“AI’s future depends on rethinking its hardware foundations. Vertical Compute is building one of the most compelling architectural shifts we’ve seen in years. We’re excited to back the team as they move from validation to large-scale industrial deployment.”, says Guilhem de Vregille, Partner at XAnge.

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The AI Revolution and the Memory Wall.
The current AI boom has catapulted equipment providers to unprecedented heights, with Nvidia leading the charge. As Nvidia’s market capitalization surpasses $3 trillion, it’s clear that the value of AI infrastructure cannot be overstated. At the heart of this technological boom lies the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU), a specialized chip crucial for AI applications. GPUs are designed to swiftly perform complex parallel calculations—originally for images and videos, now for AI. These powerhouses consist of two main components: the processor, which handles processing tasks and the memory, which efficiently feeds the processor with data.

As AI continues to advance, the demand for more powerful and efficient memory solutions grows exponentially. This is where Vertical Compute enters the picture, with an ambitious strategy to create a unique memory solution that could potentially overcome the limitations of current technologies like DRAM and SRAM.

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Vertical Compute, a Belgian startup that is developing more efficient chips for AI, has raised an all-equity €20m seed round just three months after launching.
The startup was cofounded by Sylvain Dubois, who previously spent four years working on Google’s semiconductor strategy in San Francisco, and Sebastien Couet, who for the past 10 years led semiconductor programmes at imec, an R&D centre based in Leuven in Belgium, which focuses on nanotechnologies.

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Unlocking the Future of AI with Verticality.
Vertical Compute’s technology will have a transformative impact, enabling next-generation applications with unparalleled efficiency and privacy. By minimizing data movement and bringing large data closer to computation, the innovation ensures energy savings of up to 80%, unlocks hyper-personalized AI solutions, and eliminates the need for remote data transfers, protecting user privacy.

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