Literal Labs, a machine learning and AI startup spun out from Newcastle University, has raised a £4.6 million seed round led by Northern Gritstone. The round also saw participation from Mercuri, Sure Valley Ventures, Cambridge Future Tech SPV and several angel investors.
Spun-out from Newcastle University in 2024 by cofounders Dr Alex Yakovlev and Dr Rishad Shafik, Literal Labs applies the Tsetlin machine approach to AI that is faster, explainable, and orders of magnitude more energy efficient than today’s neural networks. Like neural networks, the Tsetlin machine can perform complex machine learning training. However, unlike neural networks, it is based on propositional logic rather than biology, which makes it more efficient in terms of computation, speeding up inferencing, and less energy intensive.
Recent MLPerf Anomaly detection benchmarking shows Literal Labs can achieve 54x faster inferencing than “classic techniques” for machine learning applications, with 52x less energy consumption than equivalent neural networks. It also achieved 250x faster performance than XGBoost for machine learning applications.
Literal Labs is led by CEO Noel Hurley, who spent more than 10 years at Arm and led its CPU division, which accounted for over 70% of revenue – totalling approximately £781m.
With Literal Labs having doubled its headcount from six to 12 in 2024, this new funding will be used to bring its first commercial product to market, grow its engineering team, and continue delivering on its vision for AI that improves life for all and treads lightly on our environment.
Active since May 2022, Northern Gritstone has already made 37 investments in early-stage businesses in the North of England, expanded its investment team and built NG Innovation Services, its venture building ‘toolkit’ offering, inter alia: talent management; growth advice; business services; and the accelerator program, NG Studios.
