Prime Highlights-
- Axelera AI appointed GPU pioneer Osman Kent and former British Business Bank chief Catherine Lewis La Torre as non-executive directors.
- The board additions come as Axelera scales further into enterprise and data center markets with its AI inference hardware platforms.
Key Facts-
- Kent co-founded 3Dlabs, holds 21 U.S. patents and has advised Atlantic Bridge Capital since 2018.
- Lewis La Torre led the British Business Bank from 2016 to 2023 and has 35 years of experience.
Background-
Axelera AI has appointed Osman Kent and Catherine Lewis La Torre CBE as non-executive directors, as the Eindhoven-based chip company expands further into enterprise and data center markets.
The company announced the appointments, both directors bring decades of experience in building chip firms and growing businesses through Europe’s private capital markets.
Kent co-founded and led 3Dlabs, a chip company once valued at $1 billion on NASDAQ and widely seen as an early architect of the GPU. He later co-founded Numecent, holds 21 U.S. patents and has served as a venture partner at Atlantic Bridge Capital since 2018.
Lewis La Torre brings more than 35 years in private equity and venture capital. She co-founded her own private equity firm in 1999 and ran the British Business Bank from 2016 to 2023.
Under her lead, the bank became the largest domestic institutional investor in UK venture capital funds and technology firms. She also oversaw the UK’s Covid-19 business support schemes. She sits on the boards of HSBC Innovation Banking UK and Alantra Partners and advises Octopus Energy Generation.
Axelera CEO and co-founder Fabrizio Del Maffeo said their experience will prove valuable as the company grows its global commercial scale. Kent said Axelera is doing for AI inference what 3Dlabs did for graphics. Lewis La Torre called the firm a European deep tech company that can compete globally in AI.