AI Meet-Up: Talks & Drinks | Edition #13

Join us for talks and drinks, and connect with the artificial intelligence community of the AI Innovation Center!

Save the date - March 19

On March 19, we are happy to welcome Axelera AI to the stage. Axelera AI is a European semiconductor company focused on delivering high-performance, energy-efficient AI acceleration for edge and embedded systems.

Their technology centers on a purpose-built AI inference architecture that combines a custom accelerator with a tightly integrated software stack, enabling fast deployment of deep-learning workloads such as computer vision, speech, and generative AI at the edge. Axelera AI’s approach emphasizes high throughput per watt, low latency, and scalability, making it well-suited for applications in industrial automation, smart infrastructure, retail analytics, and automotive.

By pairing specialized hardware with an optimized compiler and runtime environment, Axelera AI aims to close the gap between data-center-class AI performance and the power, cost, and form-factor constraints of real-world edge deployments.

Program AI Meet-Up

Date: 19 March 2026

Location: AI Innovation Center, High Tech Campus Eindhoven (HTC 5)

Program:

15:30 - 16:00 Walk-in

16:00 - 16:15 Welcome and update AI Innovation Center by Philipp Werle (HTCE)

16:15 - 17:00 Talk and Q&A by Bram Verhoef (Axelera AI)

17:00 - 17:15 Open mic

17:15 - 18:30 Drinks and networking

Our speaker

Bram Verhoef holds a diverse academic background in Statistics, Psychology, and Neuroscience. After earning his PhD from KU Leuven in 2010, he pursued post-doctoral research at Harvard University and The University of Chicago. In 2017, he returned to Belgium to join Imec as a Principal Member of Technical Staff, where he led the algorithm development for a groundbreaking analog compute-in-memory Deep Learning chip. In 2021, he co-founded Axelera AI, initially serving as Head of Machine Learning. He now leads all Customer Solutions and Engineering efforts at the company.