AI chip startup Fractile raised USD 15 million in seed funding led by Kindred Capital, NATO Innovation Fund, and Oxford Science Enterprises, with participation from Cocoa, Inovia Capital, and angel investors. The funding brings Fractile's total funding to USD 17.5 million.

The f unds were earmarked to increase its team and accelerate progress toward the company's first product.

UK-based Fractile claims that its AI chips will run large language models (LLMs) 100x faster and 10x cheaper than NVIDIA's GPUs, with 20x better performance per watt of energy than current AI hardware. The company's approach uses in-memory compute to improve inference performance, targeting 20x the TOPS/W of any other system visible today.

Analyst QuickTake: Fractile joins a list of startups that aim to take on NVIDIA's dominant market position in the GenAI training and inference space. Other recent rounds from hardware infrastructure providers include EdgeRunner AI , DreamBig Semiconductor , and Etched .