Literal Labs, a logic-based AI algorithm company led by former Arm VP Noel Hurley, announced that it has raised £4.6 million ($6.2 million) in pre-seed funding. The funding round was led by Northern Gritstone (a science and tech-focused investment firm from Northern England) and co-led by Mercuri (a London-based fund focused on companies at the intersection of media, entertainment, and technology sectors), with participation from Sure Valley Ventures, Cambridge Future Tech SPV, and several angel investors.
Literal Labs is driving logic-based AI models that are orders of magnitude faster, more energy efficient and more explainable than today’s neural networks. And its approach is inspired by the work of Mikhail Tsetlin; a mathematician and contemporary of John Macarthy who pioneered neural networks.
Like neural networks, the Tsetlin machine can perform complex machine learning training. But unlike neural networks, it is based on propositional logic, which makes it more efficient in terms of computation and energy usage, whilst speeding up inference.
Recent MLPerf Anomaly detection benchmarking shows that Literal Labs can achieve 54 times faster inference than classic techniques for machine learning applications, with 52 times less energy consumption than equivalent neural networks. It also achieved 250 times faster performance than XGBoost for machine learning applications.
Literal Labs was spun out of Newcastle University by leaders in logic-based AI, Dr. Alex Yakovlev and Dr. Rishad Shafik, along with company builder Cambridge Future Tech. Noel Hurley was later appointed CEO of Literal Labs in 2023, after spending more than 20 years at Arm, where he led its product marketing and its CPU division, which accounted for over 70% of revenue, totaling approximately $1 billion.
Literal Labs doubled its employee count from 6 to 12 in 2024, including appointing Leon Fedden, formerly AI Deep Learning platform lead at AstraZeneca, as Chief Technology Officer.
How the funding will be used: The new funding will be used to further grow its engineering team and bring its first commercial product to market later in 2025.
KEY QUOTES:
“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.”
Noel Hurley, CEO of Literal Labs
“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 when innovation can truly benefit from greater efficiency in AI.”
Duncan Johnson, CEO of Northern Gritstone
“We are excited to back Literal Labs as it redefines AI with a radically efficient alternative to existing neural networks. The team, combining deep research expertise and proven industry leadership, is uniquely positioned to commercialize this innovation.”
Esha Vatsa, Partner at Mercuri
