{
  "id": 19509105,
  "title": "Lightspeed and Alphabet's CapitalG back Fractile in £500M plus funding round",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/11/11/lightspeed-and-alphabets-capitalg-back-fractile-in-500m-plus-funding",
  "topic": "business",
  "section": "Business",
  "published": "2026-11-11T14:14:00.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Tech.eu",
    "slug": "tech-eu",
    "url": "https://tech.eu/2026/11/11/lightspeed-and-googles-capital-g-back-fractile-in-ps500m-plus-funding-round/"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "US venture capital firms Lightspeed and Alphabet's CapitalG have co-led a £500 million-plus funding round for UK chip startup Fractile, according to the UK government. The company, valued at over £5 billion, is based in Bristol and London and specializes in AI inference chips for running artificial intelligence models. Founded in 2022 by Oxford PhD Walter Goodwin, Fractile's technology keeps data directly on the chip, enabling up to a hundred times faster processing of large language models while cutting operational costs by 90 per cent.\n\nThe Series C round, led by Thrive Capital and Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, joined forces with Lightspeed, Redpoint, the UK’s Sovereign AI fund, the British Business Bank, Shopify, Balderton, Dragoneer, and Blackrock. This investment totals around £540 million, following a previous $220 million Series B round led by Accel, Factorial Funds, and Founders Fund. The Series B round valued Fractile at around £820 million.\n\nThe funding comes as the UK seeks to establish itself as a leader in certain aspects of the AI stack and build its sovereign capabilities in critical technologies, aiming to reduce dependence on overseas supply chains. AI Minister Kanishka Narayan highlighted that Fractile embodies British ambition, combining world-class chip design, engineering, and AI expertise to create faster, cheaper, and more energy-efficient hardware.",
  "summary": "US big-hitting VCs Lightspeed and Alphabet's CapitalG have backed UK chip startup Fractile in a £500m-plus funding round, which values the startup at over £5bn, the UK government said today in a press...",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}