Plural, an investment group led by government AI advisor Ian Hogarth, has spearheaded a £17 million ($22 million) funding round for Oriole Networks, a London-based artificial intelligence startup. This latest investment brings the total funding raised by Oriole Networks in 2024 to £27 million, following a £10 million round in March.
Oriole Networks, founded in 2023 as a spinout from University College London, is developing technology aimed at making generative AI faster and more sustainable through advanced photonics. The company claims its approach can accelerate the training of large language models (LLMs) by up to 100 times while significantly reducing power consumption compared to traditional methods.
The startup’s technology uses light to create networks of AI chips, combining their processing power. This innovation addresses one of the most significant challenges in scaling the generative AI sector: the substantial energy consumption of data centers used for training and running LLMs.
Ian Hogarth, who chairs the UK’s AI Safety Institute, commented on the investment: “Applying 20 years of deep research and learning in photonics to create a better AI infrastructure demonstrates how much more innovation there is to come to help reap the benefits of this technology.” He added, “The team behind Oriole Networks have proven experience in both company building and bringing deep science to commercialisation and are creating a fundamental shift in the design of next-generation networked systems that will reduce latency and slash the energy impact of data centres on which we now rely.”
Oriole Networks’ existing investors, including UCL Technology Fund, XTX Ventures, Clean Growth Fund, and Dorilton Ventures, also participated in this funding round.
James Regan, CEO of Oriole Networks, emphasized the company’s goals: “This is a booming market desperate for solutions and our ambition is to create an ecosystem of photonic networking that can reshape this industry by solving today’s bottlenecks and enabling greater competition at the GPU layer.” Regan further stated, “Building on decades of research, we’re paving the way for faster, more efficient, more sustainable AI.”
Hogarth, who previously led live music startup Songkick for over a decade, currently holds equity in several prominent tech firms, including the UK government-supported quantum group Phasecraft. He co-founded Plural with Wise co-founder Taavet Hinrikus, former Skype executive Sten Tamkivi, and former Bigpoint Games CEO Khaled Helioui.
