SiPearl announces dual-use Athena1 chip for government, defense, and aerospace applications

Expected to be available from 2027

French chip designer SiPearl has launched its Athena1 processor for dual-use applications.

Described by the company as a “bespoke version” of its HPC-dedicated chip, Rhea1, SiPearl said Athena1 will include sophisticated encryption and security capabilities to support the workloads of government, defense, and aerospace applications.

Athena1 will be available in SKUs of 16, 32, 48, 64, or 80 Arm Neoverse V1 cores, depending on the power constraints of each application. Further technical details will be released at a later date, the company said.

Like Rhea1, Athena1 will be manufactured by TSMC, with packaging of the processors initially planned for Taiwan, before being moved to a facility in Europe. The chip is expected to be available in the second half of 2027, 18 months after the expected release of Rhea1 and almost three years later than SiPearl’s first chip was originally meant to be available.

"In an era of geopolitical uncertainty, with cybersecurity issues and armed conflicts on the rise, Europe's technological sovereignty is more and more inseparable from sovereign hardware, whether for civil applications or, more importantly, defence,” said Philippe Notton, CEO and founder of SiPearl.

“It was therefore natural for SiPearl to capitalise on the expertise developed by its R&D teams in HPC to develop a new version of our first processor that perfectly meets the needs of dual-use purposes.

“As part of the roadmap entrusted to us by Europe to foster the return of high-performance processor technologies to the continent, Athena1 is the perfect complement to Rhea1 in helping to assert Europe's strategic independence.”

Launched in 2020 under the European Processor Initiative (EPI), SiPearl developed the Rhea1 processor, an Arm-based CPU designed to power supercomputers.

In July 2025, the company closed a €130 million ($152m) Series A financing round that saw participation from existing investors, European Innovation Council (EIC) Fund, and the French State, via French Tech Souveraineté, and new investor Cathay Venture.