Fractile raises $720 million to develop AI chips in Britain

British startup Fractile has raised $720 million in a Series C led by Thrive Capital, Founders Fund, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Redpoint, with backing from the Sovereign AI Fund. The British government said the company was valued at more than £5 billion; the Financial Times and a Reuters source reported that the valuation may be close to $7 billion.

Fractile is developing purpose-built AI chips as well as a machine-learning compiler to speed up the execution of language models. After a strategic pivot, its design began stacking DRAM on top of each chip to try to reduce the trade-off between memory capacity and speed. In a LinkedIn post, CEO Walter Goodwin said the funding will allow the company to ship its first chips and systems next year, although there is still substantial work ahead.