- Samsung has backed a tiny Dutch chipmaker targeting Nvidia
- Euclyd raised $231 million before shipping its first commercial chip
- Euclyd plans to sell complete AI systems directly to enterprises but will not deliver its first hardware until 2028
Samsung has joined a group of investors backing a small Netherlands-based chip designer aiming to challenge Nvidia‘s dominance in artificial intelligence hardware.
The startup, called Euclyd, closed a funding round worth $231 million, drawing support from several firms beyond the South Korean electronics giant.
According to Bernardo Kastrup, Chief Executive of Euclyd, commercial hardware from the company will not reach customers until 2028
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A chip built to rival Nvidia’s grip
Euclyd’s Series A round totalled €200 million and was co-led by Somerset Capital Partners, the Scaleup Europe Fund, and Innovation Industries, alongside Samsung.
In an exclusive interview with CNBC, Kastrup said that the capital would support two separate lines of business going forward.
One involves selling physical hardware and rack systems directly to enterprises wanting to run their own AI inference securely on-site.
The other involves licensing the underlying intellectual property to firms that want to build their own chips using Euclyd’s designs.
Founded in 2024, the company is developing a chip system built around a different architecture than conventional graphics processors, covering both the processor and memory layers.
Nvidia’s GPUs were originally built for video games but became central to AI training and inference and pushed the company to become the world’s most valuable.
That dominance now covers the market for the very highest performing chips available today, though rivals are emerging quickly.
“AI is becoming a foundation of economic growth, scientific discovery and national competitiveness, but its potential will remain constrained unless we fundamentally change the infrastructure beneath it,” Kastrup said.
Why Samsung’s involvement matters beyond cash
Kastrup revealed that Samsung’s contribution extends well past the money it committed to the round.
“Samsung can help us in more ways than money. They are one of the biggest memory manufacturers in the world,” said Kastrup. “They do a lot of engineering, they know a lot about systems, they know the supply chain, they have a huge network.”
Although Euclyd expects to commence shipping its chips in two years, the company plans to serve thousands of enterprise customers by 2030.
The company’s systems remain unproven at any meaningful commercial scale so far, leaving real-world performance an open question.
Several major technology firms are pursuing similar paths away from dependence on Nvidia’s processors for AI workloads.
OpenAI announced in August that its first in-house AI chip, named Jalapeño, delivered industry-leading speed and efficiency.
Google, Amazon Web Services, and Meta are each developing their own chips for internal AI use as well.
Whether a small Dutch startup with no shipped product can meaningfully dent Nvidia’s position remains genuinely uncertain given the scale involved.
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