Fractile expansion demonstrates UK growth opportunity | Computer Weekly

"The expansion sees the chip company expand its London and Bristol sites over the next three years to create a UK industrial hardware engineering facility. Fractile also plans to grow its UK-based team to develop and optimise next-generation systems. The Oxford-founded chip manufacturer claims it can take on the AI acceleration chip giants with a new kind of architecture that is capable of running trained AI models up to 50 times faster and at 10% of the cost of GPU-based AI inference."

"Backed by Oxford Science Enterprises and funded by Kindred Capital and the NATO Innovation Fund, the company aims to have its AI chips ready this year. It is currently expanding its team of 70 with 40 additional roles, including hardware engineering and testing, semiconductor design and software development. Last year, Fractile caught the attention of Intel's former CEO, Pat Gelsigner, who posted on LinkedIn that he would be investing in the startup."

"Following UK chip startup Fractile's £100m expansion in Bristol, the UK government is calling for innovative tech businesses to invest in the UK. The government sees the expansion as a significant boost to the UK's AI hardware ecosystem. Fractile positions its technology as an alternative to Nvidia graphics processor units (GPUs) for accelerating AI inference workloads. Fractile also plans to grow its UK-based team to develop and optimise next-generation systems."

Fractile is investing £100m to expand London and Bristol sites to create a UK industrial hardware engineering facility over the next three years. The Oxford-founded company will grow its UK team from 70 by adding 40 roles across hardware engineering, testing, semiconductor design and software development. The startup claims an architecture that can run trained AI models up to 50 times faster and at 10% of GPU-based inference cost. Backing includes Oxford Science Enterprises, Kindred Capital and the NATO Innovation Fund. Intel's former CEO Pat Gelsigner signalled investment and praised the in-memory compute approach for reducing memory and power bottlenecks. The government views the expansion as a boost to the UK's AI hardware ecosystem.

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