UK chip startup Tendrils Compute raises US$30 million
Benchmark led the funding round for the Cambridge-based company, which is developing a processor designed around parallel computing.
Tendrils Compute, a Cambridge-based chip developer seeking an alternative to conventional CPU and GPU architectures, has raised US$30 million. Benchmark led the round, with investors including Visionaries Clubs and the UK Sovereign AI Fund.
The startup bases its approach on a computing model known as interaction nets. It believes general-purpose chips using that model can scale while avoiding the cost and longstanding design problems it associates with existing CPUs.
Tendrils said its processor is being designed with thousands of cores working in parallel, rather than starting with a sequential architecture. Alongside the hardware, it is developing Vine, an open-source programming language intended for architectures built around parallel processing. The company has not yet published hardware benchmarks showing its performance.
Other participants in the funding round were FR8, Antimatter, Cloudberry VC, Conviction, Embassy Ventures and SV Angels. Tendrils is among several UK chip developers attracting investor backing, alongside Olix and Fractile.
