With partner growth ‘reflecting rising demand across industrial, retail, health care, security and other markets,’ Axelera CMO Alexis Crowell tells CRN in an exclusive interview that the company is seeing the most involved partner engagement outside the U.S.
While Nvidia continues to expand its increasingly massive AI infrastructure empire, partner interest is growing in a much smaller chip design firm that has been expanding its purview beyond edge AI to enterprise data centers.
That company is Netherlands-based Axelera AI, a startup with hundreds of employees that said it has more than quadrupled its partner roster to over 60 partners since launching its global partner program, the Partner Accelerator Network, in June of last year to generate demand for its energy-efficient AI accelerator chips.
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New partners include the Middle Eastern branch of accounting giant PwC, Spain-based cloud infrastructure software provider OpenNebula and Frederick, Md.-based computer vision ISV Ultralytics, representing the various types of partners in the program.
Sharang Gupta, a partner at PwC Middle East, said his firm is looking at Axelera-based solutions to “deploy AI reliably, responsibly and at scale” so that it can enable “faster, smarter decision-making” for its clients in the region.
“Our collaboration with Axelera brings together advanced edge AI capabilities, sector expertise and transformation capability to help organizations connect AI investment to tangible operational outcomes and unlock greater value from intelligent, connected operations,” he said in a statement.
Axelera Sees ‘Huge Adoption’ Through Channel Outside U.S.
With partner growth “reflecting rising demand across industrial, retail, health care, security and other markets,” Axelera CMO Alexis Crowell (pictured above) told CRN in an exclusive interview that the company is seeing the deepest partner engagement outside the U.S., where partners are mostly making introductions to customers rather than leading deals.
Even so, Crowell said the U.S. partner activity has been meaningful.
“It may still be that we do some of the direct engagement, but that introduction has been facilitated by our channel partners in ways that we may not have been able to do ourselves as fast,” she said. “And in other countries, we’re seeing huge adoption through the channel to [the point] where we’re starting to see a bigger mix go through those efforts.”
In Europe, however, Crowell said Axelera’s partners are demonstrating “more autonomy” in working with customers and “running with it themselves, which is amazing.”
“Being a European company, we have a little bit more of a baseline in terms of being well known, so we certainly have seen tremendous growth there as well,” she said.
Crowell hopes to replicate this way of working with partners in other regions.
“If they can lean in and run, and they’ve got their own client list, we don’t want to get in the way of what business they are driving,” she said. “We want to enable their business. That is a fundamental premise and goal of what this entire program is built on.”
Data Center, Physical AI Activity Helps Drive Momentum In Europe
One growth driver for Axelera in Europe is enterprise data centers that are using its AI chips to run so-called AI factories as part of a sovereign AI push across the continent, according to Crowell, who previously worked at Intel.
While supply chain constraints from other vendors in Europe have served as one factor for customers getting behind Axelera’s chips, the interest has also been driven by the superior energy efficiency and affordability of its products, the executive said.
Axelera has also seen traction in the growing market for physical AI applications, which includes a new partnership with DoD Solution, a Ukrainian defense company that is building on-board computing platforms for drones using its chips, according to Crowell.
“What we can do in single-digit watts [for energy consumption] either takes multiple cards from other vendors, or it takes much more power [from other vendors] and doesn’t then physically fit into these smaller-form-factor devices,” she added.
In India, Partner Sees Big Opportunity For The Channel
In India, one channel partner that has bet on Axelera’s silicon platform over those from Nvidia and other competitors to build its business is WGTech, a Bangalore-based computer vision solution provider that employs 55 people.
Kannan Srinivasagam, founder and CEO of WGTech, told CRN that he’s hoping to build on the success his company has seen with Axelera to expand to the U.S. after developing complete solutions that span hardware and software for use cases like defect detection for manufacturers.
One major benefit the leader has seen from his partnership with Axelera is the access his company gets to the startup’s compiler experts and field application engineers.
“Because of the initial successes, I think it’s helping drive the future collaboration as well and getting into new opportunities and newer use cases,” he said.
Srinivasagam said he ended up choosing Axelera over Nvidia because the startup had better product availability and the energy-efficiency advantages of its chips were a good fit for the hot environments of the manufacturing companies WGTech works with.
“Even with a heat sink, if you don’t have the proper alignment, there is a chance that the performance [of non-Axelera chips] degrades with respect to the heat,” he said.
While WGTech has seen traction with chips based on Axelera’s first-generation Metis chip architecture, Srinivasagam has higher expectations for the company’s next-generation Europa architecture, which is set to provide a major performance boost.
“With Europa coming, I expect it to go further,” he said.
Axelera Hopes To Make Partner Resources ‘Programmatic’
While Axelera has improved the benefits it provides through its partner program, Crowell said the startup still has work to do, particularly in making things more programmatic.
“I really want to get to a programmatic approach to co-marketing so that customers can know their guidelines, they know what they can go do, and they understand how to go build that, but also co-sales and what that looks like,” she said.
The startup is also working to make its training program available to partners online, expanding beyond the in-person sessions it has held, according to Crowell.
While Axelera may have more than quadrupled its partner roster over the past year, the executive said she is interested in expanding the startup’s reach with even more partners, but only if the partnerships are mutually beneficial.
“Where we can really build business together,those are the companies we really want to make sure we’re expanding with,” she said.
