Bristol AI chip designer bags $50m from Valley VC

Re: Bristol

So a few points:

When you say UK investors do you mean venture capital funds registered as UK partnerships, British partners at overseas funds, funds run by Brits, or something else? Bear in mind Atomico's HQ is in London, so not suer your statement is correct.

For any large scale silicon play it is critical to have serious valley based investors as that is will plug you into all the necessary customer and partner ecosystems at the right level and act as a social signal to other tech companies, and more importantly - experienced industry executives who you will need to poach to set up your OEM relationships, get your chips to tape, get your initial PoC's in place etc. you are to be taken seriously.

Silicon investments are highly capital intensive with almost binary outcomes. UK has long track record of companies not making it in this space (with a few successes). I confessed to being slightly impressed that Atomico made the investment in the first place - (suspect without a large US investor they would have eventually needed to write it off or had it snapped up as a small tuck in acquisition for IP now needs a $billion+ outcome for it to be meaningful to Sequoia), and obviously someone there has very big balls (or whatever the female equivalent of that expression is; though based on general VC statistics, less likely)

Selling to highest foreign bidder is not a bad strategy if price is right - look at Autonomy - what a result! What's important is that the money gets recycled into next generation of innovation - which seems to be happening.