AI infrastructure startup Ori Industries has raised $140m to scale its compute-as-a-service business as governments across Europe ramp up spending on the rails that power artificial intelligence.
The UK-based startup provides companies with pay-as-you-go cloud-based access to high performance compute for AI model training, by partnering with data centres across Europe.
The raise, announced by Ori in a press release, follows a slew of big money commitments to building AI infrastructure from London, Paris and Brussels in recent weeks.
Last week, the EU said it would funnel €200bn into the tech and France announced €109bn in funding commitments for AI over the next five years, most of which would be spent on building data centres. In January, the UK said it had secured £14.5bn for data centres from private companies.
Ori also announced an undisclosed investment from the VC arm of oil giant Saudi Aramco, which isn’t included in the $140m, which will see it launch a subsidiary in the country.
The startup says that a larger raise is currently underway and expected to close in 2025.
Access to high performance compute is crucial for businesses building AI models and bolstering European companies’ access to the most powerful chips is seen as key to ensuring the region doesn’t fall further behind the US and China in the AI race.
Founded in 2019, Ori said it plans to roll out access to two of Nvidia’s most powerful AI chips, H200 and GB200, in the UK in the next few months.
The startup had previously raised $18.1m, according to Dealroom, from investors including Episode 1 Ventures and the VC arm of Spanish telecommunications giant Telefónica.
In October last year, cofounder and CEO Mahdi Yahya told Business Insider that the company would invest nine figures in the UK’s AI infrastructure over the next 24 months.
It’s not the only UK startup promising big investments into the country’s AI infrastructure.
Nscale, which is building AI-ready data centres and raised $155m in December 2024, said it would invest £2.5bn to support data centre infrastructure over the next three years.
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/ori-industries-ai-compute-raise-news/
