Fractile, a London-based startup building chips for AI inference, raised $720 million in a Series C round that values the company at $7 billion, the U.K. government said on Nov. 11.
The round was led by Thrive Capital, Founders Fund, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Redpoint. The U.K.'s Sovereign AI Fund, the British Business Bank and Alphabet's CapitalG also took part.
Fractile's chip is built to run already-trained AI models rather than train new ones. Instead of storing data in a separate memory chip, the company stacks memory directly on top of the logic die on a single chip. Fractile says that design lets it run workloads up to 100 times faster than current chips while using 90% less energy.
Anthropic has already committed about $250 million to chip orders for 2027 delivery, according to Tech Funding News, the year Fractile expects to ship its first commercial systems.
The British government said the investment through its Sovereign AI Fund was meant to ensure “the U.K. has a greater stake in the hardware that will underpin its future economy.” Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds said Fractile's footprint in Bristol would grow further.
Fractile was founded in 2022 by Walter Goodwin and Yuhang Song and has offices in London, Bristol, Palo Alto and Taipei. The company raised $220 million at a roughly $1 billion valuation in May. Its valuation has grown sevenfold in six months.
