Northern Gritstone invests into energy-efficient AI startup Literal Labs

Northern Gritstone leads £4.6 million Seed investment into the Newcastle University spinout

Literal Labs is an AI algorithm company that uses logic-based techniques to generate custom AI models. Led by ex-Arm executive Noel Hurley, this is Northern Gritstone’s first investment linked to Newcastle University.

Cofounded by 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.

The £4.6 million seed round was joined by Mercuri, Sure Valley Ventures, Cambridge Future Tech SPV and several angel investors.

Duncan Johnson, CEO of Northern Gritstone, said: ““Literal Labs is Northern Gritstone’s first investment linked to Newcastle University, renowned for its technology-related research. We are delighted to support Noel Hurley and the Literal Labs team at a time where innovation can truly benefit from greater efficiency in AI.”

Noel Hurley, CEO of Literal Labs, said: “We’re at a pivotal moment for AI with adoption continuing to accelerate alongside sustainability and cost concerns. Our logic-based AI offers a new solution for those that want and need high-performing AI that is faster, more energy efficient and more explainable than what’s currently available via neural networks. This funding comes at a time when we’re ready to significantly speed up our product development and will enable us to bring our first product to market later this year.”