Callosum raises $10.3m from Plural and ARIA to build alternative AI infrastructure
The Cambridge-born startup secured backing to scale its software stack and expand its London team.
≈ £7.6M at $1 = £0.7412 on 26 Feb 2026
Callosum builds systems-level software that allows different artificial intelligence models to operate collaboratively across diverse chip architectures.
Callosum has secured $10.3m in new funding to support its work on artificial intelligence infrastructure. The financing round was led by Plural, with backing from the Advanced Research and Invention Agency alongside angel investors Charlie Songhurst, Stan Boland and John Lazar. The company intends to direct the capital toward team expansion in London, software stack development and securing compute resources for sovereign infrastructure.
Founded by Danyal Akarca and Jascha Achterberg, who met during their doctoral studies at Cambridge, Callosum takes inspiration from neuroscience to design systems where multiple specialised components function together. The company's platform allows diverse models to run across varied hardware environments, aiming to reduce reliance on single providers and improve performance in complex real-world tasks.
From the founder
"Big labs are currently betting that one model will rule them all. We think that’s wrong and our work proves this. Nature shows that real intelligence emerges from many systems working together. We’ve brought together incredible talent to enable a paradigm shift in how we build intelligent systems to solve real-world problems, with the infrastructure to make that possible, on any chip, anywhere in the world."
Danyal Akarca
Co-founder at Callosum
Investor perspective
"Danyal and Jascha have been published in several Nature journals and worked with some of the most prestigious AI and compute organisations in the world. Now they’ve built an incredible team to define and commercialise entirely new ground. Their vision for a multi-model, multi-chip future could be transformative and positions them to compete with the world’s biggest chip and model makers. These are serious founders tackling a serious mission, which is exactly what we look for at Plural."
Ian Hogarth
Partner, Plural
Use of funds
- 01Grow the team
- 02Continue product development
- 03Build out infrastructure
Investors
Ian Hogarth
Plural
Advanced Research and Invention Agency
Charlie Songhurst
Stan Boland
John Lazar