SiPearl, the French-headquartered fabless semiconductor company developing Europe’s high-performance, energy-efficient processors for supercomputing and AI, has finalized its €130 million Series A funding round with a third and final tranche of €32 million.
This closing brings the largest Series A raise in the European fabless chip sector to completion. The final tranche includes renewed support from the EIC Fund and French Tech Souveraineté (under the France 2030 initiative), and introduces Cathay Venture—Taiwan’s major private equity firm—as a first-time investor in France.
Founded in 2020 under the European Processor Initiative (EPI), SiPearl was seed-funded by the European Union to help restore technological sovereignty in processor design. Since its inception, the company has grown to a team of 200 across France, Spain, and Italy, and established dedicated semiconductor design infrastructure, including data centers equipped with proprietary emulation servers.
At the core of its innovation is Rhea1, touted as the most complex processor ever designed in Europe, featuring 80 Arm Neoverse V1 cores and over 61 billion transistors. The chip recently taped out and has been handed off to TSMC in Taiwan for production.
Rhea1 is set to power the CPU cluster of JUPITER, Europe’s first exascale supercomputer, operated by Germany’s Jülich Supercomputing Centre. The processor is also positioned as a strategic asset for Europe’s competitiveness and digital independence.
The funding will support Rhea1’s industrialization and further R&D for next-generation chips targeting supercomputing, AI, and enterprise data centers. SiPearl plans to launch its Series B round in the coming weeks to continue scaling its impact across critical digital infrastructure.
