Romanian high-performance computing startup Amsimcel said on Monday, October 17, that it attracted EUR 4.8 million in blended financing through the European Innovation Council (EIC) Accelerator. The money will be used to develop the company, finalize product development, commercial enhancement, and market expansion.

The local company was selected among the 75 innovative European startups that will receive financial support worth EUR 400 million, all together, in the form of grants and equity investments from the EIC Accelerator. The selection process was highly competitive, with 232 companies interviewed by juries of experienced investors and entrepreneurs from a total of more than 1,000 applications.

“The EIC Accelerator is one of the most competitive funding programs at the European level, where the success rate is 8.1%, and the top 3 places in attracting funding are occupied by France, Germany, and Israel, countries with a tradition in the area of innovation and technological development. The selected companies have a wide geographical spread, covering 21 countries and 20% of them have women at the top. In addition, the latest round of applications for the EIC Accelerator closed on October 5, with a further 1,092 companies submitting full proposals,” Amsimcel explained in a press release.

In most cases, companies receive the grant funding in the next two to three months, while the first investment decisions will be made next year.

The Romanian startup said that, over the next three years, it would expand through a total EIC financing of EUR 2.5 million grant plus EUR 1.1 million equity component, co-financed by an additional VC round of EUR 1.2 million backed by existing and new investors.

“Funding of HyperPV by the European Innovation Council, one the most competitive EU accelerators in the world, is a recognition of the innovation proposed by Amsimcel. HyperPV will strengthen the European Semiconductor Ecosystem by bringing the much-needed disruption and solving the bottlenecks in the existing chip design flows. We took the first step in putting Romania on the global EDA map, as international companies will benefit from this solution in speeding up their chip production and quickly releasing new electronic products on the market,” said Catalin Tugui, Co-Founder & CEO of Amsimcel.

Amsimcel is a deep-tech startup developing the next-generation platform for the verification of leading-edge chips founded in 2017 in Romania by Catalin Tugui (38), Co-Founder, CEO & Physical Design Verification Engineer, Emanuel Dogaru (35), Co-Founder & CTO, and Gabriel Donici (38), Co-Founder & Advisor. Anca Marcu (35), CFO, ACCA-certified financial expert with previous executive experience in startups and banking, played a key role in the funding submission process.

The startup is an alumnus of Techcelerator & Nvidia Inception, with current investors Techcelerator & GapMinder VC, TechAngels Romania, Plug and Play Tech Center and backed by Israelian angel investors from which the startup previously raised Pre-Seed funding of EUR 500,000.

In December 2021, .lumen, which created the first glasses designed to help the mobility of the blind, won the first grant from the European Innovation Council (EIC) accelerator of EUR 9 million.

irina.marica@romania-insider.com

(Photo source: the company)