UK chip startup Fractile has raised a $220m Series B led by Accel, Factorial Funds and Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund.
Founded in 2022 by Oxford researcher Walter Goodwin, Fractile is developing AI chips for inference, the process of running an AI model. The company has been repeatedly namechecked by UK government officials and is rumoured to be eyeing a deal with US AI giant Anthropic.
Other investors in the round include Conviction, Gigascale, O1A, Felicis, Buckley Ventures and 8VC.
Fractile’s target market is data centre builders and AI companies, and it’s aiming to deliver chips to customers in 2027. It says its product can help models run 25 times faster and at 10% of the cost of current alternatives.
It’ll take something big to win market share. At present, the industry is almost entirely dominated by Nvidia — the world’s most valuable company.
Fractile previously raised $22.5m in January this year. Existing backers include the NATO Innovation Fund and Cocoa VC. Hermann Hauser, former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger and serial founder Stan Boland have also backed Fractile as angel investors.
The company is now hiring across the UK, in London, Bristol, as well as the US and Taiwan.
