Oriole Raises £10M Seed Funding to Tackle AI’s Carbon Footprint

Oriole’s technology presents a solution to the limitations posed by traditional Ethernet connections, which often impede the optimal performance of AI systems. By offering an alternative approach, Oriole aims to overcome the barriers associated with Ethernet dependency, thereby enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of AI operations.

UCL spinout Oriole Networks has secured a significant milestone in its journey by raising £10 million in funding, marking one of the largest seed rounds in recent memory. The company’s innovative technology aims to minimize the energy consumption required to operate AI data centers, presenting a promising solution to address sustainability challenges in the industry.The £10 million funding round was jointly led by prominent investors including UCL Technology Fund, Clean Growth Fund, XTX Ventures, and Dorilton Ventures.

CEO James Regan elaborated to Tech.eu that securing the recent funding allows Oriole Networks to devote all resources towards advancing its groundbreaking technology. Oriole’s pioneering approach involves establishing connections between GPUs’ networks using light beams, replacing conventional ethernet cables. This innovative method aims to significantly enhance data transfer speeds within data centers, potentially achieving a hundredfold increase in efficiency. While Oriole has made significant progress in testing individual components of the technology, such as the light-based network architecture, and has successfully simulated the entire system, the deployment of the technology in operational data centers is still projected to be several years away. Nonetheless, with the support of key investors like UCL Technology Fund, Clean Growth Fund, XTX Ventures, and Dorilton Ventures, Oriole is poised to continue pushing the boundaries of AI data center efficiency and revolutionize the industry landscape.

James Regan has a proven track record of nurturing university spinouts into successful tech ventures, as demonstrated by his previous success with EFFECT Photonics, which achieved a valuation of half a billion dollars. The Oriole Networks project benefits from the expertise of a talented team of scientists, including Professor George Zervas, Alessandro Ottino, and Joshua Benjamin. Professor Zervas’s research forms the cornerstone of Oriole’s GPU connection technology, which relies on cutting-edge developments in light-based network architectures. This collaboration underscores Oriole’s commitment to leveraging academic research and innovative technologies to drive forward advancements in AI data center efficiency.

The soaring demand for artificial intelligence (AI) has resulted in a rapid expansion of high-emission data centers, prompting many large corporations to obscure their energy usage. Currently, data centers consume nearly 3% of EU electricity demand, and the European Commission anticipates this figure to increase by at least 28% by 2030. Similarly, in the United States, energy usage by data centers is projected to double between 2022 and 2030. This trend underscores the urgent need for innovative solutions to reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions in the data center industry.

Daniel Freeman, General Partner at Dorilton Ventures, highlighted the significance of Oriole’s technology in addressing networking constraints in high-performance computing (HPC) environments. He emphasized that Oriole’s innovative approach has the potential to unleash the untapped capabilities of existing infrastructure, particularly in supporting computationally driven businesses.

Beverley Gower-Jones OBE, Managing Partner of Clean Growth Fund, underscored the urgency of sustainable development in the face of escalating energy consumption by data centers. She emphasized the critical need for innovative solutions to achieve Net Zero goals, especially considering the exponential growth of data center energy consumption globally. Gower-Jones praised Oriole’s radical approach to Net Zero innovation as a crucial step toward mitigating the environmental impact of data centers and ensuring sustainable growth in the digital infrastructure sector.