Eindhoven, North Brabant, Netherlands
As the CEO and Co-Founder of Axelera AI, I am passionate about developing a powerful, efficient, competitive, and user-friendly Artificial Intelligence platform for a safer, greener, and trusted world. With over 20 years of experience in the tech industry, I have a proven track record of leading successful startups and scaling them to global markets. I have a strong background in business strategy, innovation, and leadership, with a Master's degree in Telecommunication Engineering from Politecnico di Milano and executive education in M&A from London Business School. I have also completed various courses in business model innovation, blue ocean strategy, lean organization, and six sigma. My mission is to leverage AI to create positive impact and value for society and businesses.
Axelera AI is developing a powerful, efficient, competitive and user friendly Artificial Intelligence platform for a safer, greener and trusted world. The company started the operations in July 2021 with a seed investment round of USD 12 million followed by a series A investment round of USD 28 million in October 2022 which ended up to be oversubscribed and then extended few months later to USD 38 million. In 2024 the company has raised USD 80 million in Series B and in 2025 secured USD 60+ million grants from EuroHPC. The first product, METIS, is the most powerful (210 TOPS), efficient (15 TOPS/W peak) and cost-effective AI accelerator for Edge AI, it's in full production since February 2025 and people can buy it online on Axelera AI webstore. Headquartered in the AI Innovation Center of the High Tech Campus in Eindhoven, Axelera AI also has R&D offices in Leuven (BE), Zurich (CH), Milan (IT), Bristol (UK). The company has already recruited an elite team of more than 200 senior engineers and developers from world-leading AI companies and research centers, including Intel, Qualcomm, IBM, Graphcore, NXP and imec.
Bitfury is a technology group which develops solutions for blockchain, crypto assets as a service, dual-phase immersion cooling and for artificial intelligence. The expertise of Bitfury covers chip design for crypto assets and artificial intelligence, system integration, data center operation, blockchain software stack. I'm Managing Director of Bitfury AI, Head of Artificial Intelligence of Bitfury Group, member of the C-Suite Executive team. I have defined and articulated the mission, the vision, the strategy and I’m now driving the execution of Bitfury group in the Artificial Intelligence domain. I have incubated the AI division, identified the core technology, recruited the core team, and I have been actively supporting the fundraising and spin-off activities. Our objective is to create a multi-billion business in the AI domain and to drive a European Renaissance in Artificial Intelligence delivering to market a game-changing AI hardware and software technology for AI workload acceleration.
Within AAEON ( Asus Group ), I founded UP Bridge The Gap in 2015, launched it with a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter and led the worldwide development. UP was the first x86 professional maker computing board, UP Squared became the reference product for Intel IOTG and in 2018 we co-launched with Intel AI Product Group the "AI in Production" campaign with UP AI Core as first IOT product line of artificial intelligence accelerators powered by Intel Movidius 2 and Myriad X. UP Bridge The Gap got tremendous market traction with important contribution of AAEON worldwide revenue and brand awareness. From 2018 I had been Advisor in the EMEA IOT Advisory Board of Intel IOTG.
Corporate VP and Managing Director for Europe of AAEON, an ASUS associated company and founder and Managing Director of UP Bridge The Gap, the product line of AAEON for Innovators with focus on IOT & AI. AAEON Technology ( www.aaeon.com ) is an ASUS Associated Company and a leading manufacturer of advanced industrial and embedded computing platforms focused on Internet of Things ( IOT ) and Industrial Internet of Things ( IIOT ). Committed to innovative engineering, AAEON provides integrated solutions, hardware and services for premier OEM/ODMs and system integrators worldwide. Experience During my five years in AAEON I re-engineered the company, defining and implementing a new strategy which repositioned AAEON from a general embedded computing Taiwanese supplier to the most innovating company within the AI & IOT embedded computing space. We expanded the operation in Europe open representative offices in the UK, Sweden, Italy, Spain, Poland in addition to the existing ones in the Netherlands, France and Germany, we established a local supply chain and integration team, we introduced lean operations improving company processes. We could double the revenue within 4 years, growing twice compared to the market keeping end to end profitability. During the period I personally established strong global partnership with Intel making AAEON - through the product line and brand UP Bridge The Gap which I created in 2015 - a reference supplier for their AI & IOT divisions and we have started shifting the company from simple hardware manufacturer to an AI & IOT solution provider. Aaeon Europe was the first company who introduced in the embedded and IoT market AI solutions in 2017.
Working in Eindhoven as Sales Director of Embedded division, responsible of Distribution & Key Accounts for Nordic, Benelux, East Europe and South Europe. I restructured and revitalize the team and I defined a new strategy and approach in Northern and Eastern Europe. My team was accountable for half of the revenue of the European embedded division with a turnover above 30MUSD.
In 2010 I moved to France as Advantech France Country Manager to support restructuring the local team and define a strategy for all French territory. Working between Paris, Milan & Eindhoven, I was also director of Embedded Channel & Key Account Sales for France, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain. The area under my management was the largest of Advantech Europe and grew on average >20% y/y
I joined the company during the great recession of 2008. We changed the organization, the objectives, the strategy and re-launched the Key Account Sales Force ePlatform Group activities in France, Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal after years of failure. I was responsible for Milan and Paris Offices. The new organization start growing at fast pace, doubling the turnover each year from 2010 to 2013. In addition to the tasks above, after few months I was assigned to develop the Digital Signage market for Advantech Europe across Europe.