UK AI inference chip startup Fractile seeks to raise over $200 million in funding, with a valuation of $1 billion

According to 1M AI News monitoring, FT cited insiders as saying that London chip startup Fractile is negotiating a new round of fundraising with venture capital firms such as Accel, aiming to raise over $200 million, with a valuation of around $1 billion.

Fractile was founded in 2022, and CEO Walter Goodwin holds a PhD from Oxford University. The team brings together former engineers from NVIDIA, Imagination Technologies, and Graphcore. The company previously completed a seed round of approximately $15 million, with investors including the NATO Innovation Fund and former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger. Unlike NVIDIA GPUs, Fractile's AI chips use static random-access memory (SRAM), focusing on speed and cost optimization in AI inference scenarios, integrating both hardware and software. Last month, the company announced plans to invest £100 million in London and Bristol over the next three years to build new industrial hardware engineering facilities.

The UK's AI chip sector has seen intensive fundraising recently: a month ago, UK AI chip startup Olix completed a $220 million funding round.