Fractile to Invest £100 Million in AI Chip Production in the UK

Fractile's Investment in AI Technology

LONDON, Feb 10 (Reuters) - Britain said on Tuesday that homegrown chipmaker Fractile will invest 100 million pounds ($136.43 million) in its UK operations over the next three years, including a new hardware engineering facility to support the scale-up of its AI chip production.

Expansion of Engineering Team

The investment from Fractile, a London-based computer chipmaker, will fund a larger UK-based engineering team and support work on next-generation systems designed to run advanced artificial intelligence models faster than current hardware, the British government said.

New Bristol Facility

The new site, in the western English city of Bristol, will assemble Fractile's chips into full AI systems and host a testing lab for software built for future compute technologies.

Government Support for Tech Sector

Britain said Fractile's decision to scale in the country reflects confidence in its tech sector, which the government says is now valued at more than 1 trillion pounds.

AI Minister Kanishka Narayan, who is expected to announce the investment at an event in London, said Fractile's plans showed how British companies could strengthen the country's position in advanced computing.

($1 = 0.7330 pounds)

(Reporting by Sam Tabahriti, editing by William James)