Check Point Co-Founder Leads $27M Round In Israeli AI Chip Startup NeuroBlade

Israeli startup NeuroBlade announced on Wednesday that it has raised an additional $23 million in a funding round led Marius Nacht, a co-founder of Check Point Software Technologies. The company has emerged from stealth mode to complete a $27 million Series A funding round “to bring the first generation of its AI chip to the market.”

Intel Capital joined the funding round as a new investor, while existing investors Herzliya-based firm StageOne Ventures and Tel Aviv-based firm Grove Ventures, headed by Dov Moran, inventor of the USB flash drive and co-founder of M-Systems, also participated. Initial capital for NeuroBlade was raised by both VCs as well as private investors including Rami Lipman.

Founded in 2017 by Elad Sity, the company’s CEO, and Eliad Hillel, VP Product Strategy and CTO, NeuroBlade is developing a smaller, cost efficient AI chip that uses unique technology to “solve tomorrow’s problems” in addition to the fundamental problems already present in the AI processor market, the company said in a statement.

One of those issues has to do with the devices themselves. The chip is meant to address problems such as inadequate size, price, and performance by creating a chip that can “run several neural networks and multiple complex algorithms at the same time,” according to the statement.

“We are witnessing exciting changes in the field of computer architecture and we are glad to lead the investment round in NeuroBlade,” said Shai Schiller and Ofir Soham, Check Point investment managers, in the statement.

NeuroBlade founders Sity and Hillel are both graduates of the technological unit of Israel’s Intelligence Corps and former employees of SolarEdge, a successful public company in Israel that began as a small startup.