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Oriole Networks raises a £10m seed round to build AI ‘super-brains’

March 27, 2024 – the startup using light to train LLMs a hundred times faster with only a fraction of power – has raised £10 million in Seed funding to revolutionise AI performance and adoption, and solve AI’s critical energy problem. The round, which is one of the UK’s largest Seed raises in recent years, was co-led by UCL Technology Fund, Clean Growth Fund, XTX Ventures and Dorilton Ventures. It was supported by Innovate UK Investor Partnership.

Founded in 2023 by UCL scientists, Professor George Zervas, Alessandro Ottino and Joshua Benjamin, with seasoned CEO James Regan, Oriole Networks has developed a novel way of using light to connect thousands of AI chips together. Once connected, the power of each individual graphics processing units (GPUs) is combined to form a “super-brain.” This super-brain can be used to train advanced Large Language Models a hundred times faster, with a thousandth of the latency, while using a tiny fraction of energy.

This not only addresses rising concerns about the “obscene energy demands of AI”, but has the power to revolutionise time critical tasks, such as algorithmic trading, increase AI adoption, and accelerate machine learning algorithmic progress in a low carbon world. This will bring huge gains for all companies working with, and on AI, but particularly data centres. Data centres play a critical role in the evolution and proliferation of SaaS and its shift shift towards AI, yet are facing systemic problems and unsustainable power consumption due to increased demands.

Oriole Networks is a spinout from University College London and its IP is licensed through UCL’s technology transfer company, UCLB. It is being led by CEO Regan who already has a track record of building successful tech companies from university spinouts, having spun out EFFECT Photonics and built it to a half-a-billion-dollar company.