Literal
Literal Labs Ltd
Registered as LITERAL LABS LTDCompany 14746541Activesince 21 March 2023· Newcastle Upon Tyne
Role: Founders
Fast, low-energy and explainable AI.
Description from the company’s Startups 100 profile.
Professor Alex Yakovlev and Professor Rishad Shafik
Literal Labs: fast, low-energy and explainable AI
- Founded 2023
- £4.6m pre-seed (2025)
- Newcastle University spin-out
About
Newcastle University professors Alex Yakovlev and Rishad Shafik founded Literal Labs in 2023 to tackle AI's energy and water use and its lack of explainability. Its logic-based AI models are fast and energy-efficient and run on anything from small IoT devices to enterprise systems, without expensive GPUs or cloud servers.
In June 2025 it raised £4.6m in pre-seed funding led by North Gritstone, and four months later it was nominated for a national AI Innovation Award. Its models have run on coin-cell-powered devices for up to ten years.
Number 38 on the Startups 100 Index 2026.
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