Oriole Networks

Oriole Networks is a London-based deep-tech company on a mission to solve the two most critical bottlenecks in AI infrastructure: speed and energy. Founded in 2023 as a spinout from University College London, the company is built on more than two decades of optical networking research by Professor George Zervas and his team. Its core insight is that the electrical interconnects between GPUs and switches in today's AI data centres — not the chips themselves — are the primary source of latency and energy waste at scale. Oriole replaces these with a fully photonic network that transmits data using light rather than electricity, enabling the kind of high-bandwidth, low-latency connectivity that modern AI workloads demand.

The company's flagship product is PRISM (Photonic Routing Infrastructure for Scalable Models), described as the world's first full-photonic network for AI. PRISM uses nanosecond optical circuit switching to route data between up to one million endpoints with a single hop, eliminating the packet switching overhead that conventional electrical networks impose. Oriole claims its platform can train large language models up to 100 times faster than existing infrastructure while consuming a fraction of the energy — addressing what has become a central constraint on AI scaling. The technology is being integrated with existing server and GPU architectures through seamless software plugins.

Oriole raised £10 million in seed funding in March 2024, followed by a $22 million Series A led by Plural in October 2024, bringing total capital raised to $35 million. Investors include UCL Technology Fund, XTX Ventures, Clean Growth Fund, and Dorilton Ventures. The company has assembled one of the strongest photonics teams in the UK and is deploying early systems with hyperscale and semiconductor customers ahead of full commercial launch.