Chipmaker

• London-based startup Fractile raised $220 million in a Series funding round led by Accel, Factorial Funds, and Founders Fund to develop specialized AI chips for inference acceleration. • Founded in 2022 by Oxford researcher Walter Goodwin, Fractile is building hardware architectures designed to increase inference performance from 40 tokens per second to approximately 1,200 tokens per second. • The company claims its systems could compress workloads that currently take a month into a single day, addressing a critical bottleneck in AI deployment.

• Cerebras, a leading AI chipmaker, announced plans to raise up to $3.5 billion through an initial public offering (IPO). • The fundraising effort signals strong market confidence in specialized AI chip manufacturers as enterprises scale artificial intelligence infrastructure deployments. • Going public positions Cerebras to compete aggressively with established semiconductor giants while investing in next-generation AI computing architecture.

• Nvidia held its annual GTC technology conference on Monday, March 16, with CEO Jensen Huang delivering the keynote address amid broader market volatility tied to geopolitical tensions and oil price fluctuations. • The event timing coincides with elevated uncertainty in tech stocks, as investors reassess earnings estimates downward and monitor the impact of elevated oil prices on corporate profitability and consumer spending. • Tech sector performance remains sensitive to macroeconomic headwinds, including potential inflation from energy costs and Federal Reserve policy decisions expected this week.