CommonAI selects Kao Data to host the UK's Scaling Inference Lab - providing a national testbed for next-generation AI infrastructure. Oct 21, 2026, 08:28 ET As part of the agreement, CommonAI will deploy at least five, high-density AI clusters at Kao Data's Harlow campus - giving UK startups access to high-density rack-scale infrastructure to develop emerging AI technologies. LONDON, Oct. 21, 2026 /PRNewswire/ - Kao Data, the specialist developer and operator of data centres engineered for AI and advanced computing, has been chosen by CommonAI to host its pioneering, AI Scaling Inference Lab at its data centre campus in Harlow. Funded by the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) and delivered by CommonAI, the lab provides a neutral environment where emerging AI technologies are put to the test and benchmarked against commercial systems - prioritising rapid iteration, open collaboration and long-term sustainability. CommonAI chose Kao Data because of its industry-leading sustainability and energy efficiency credentials, its reputation as the UK's premier destination for high-density AI and supercomputing workloads, and its advantageous location between UK's cutting-edge, AI start-up communities based in London and Cambridge. Under the agreement, CommonAI will deploy a series of high-density, GPU-accelerated AI clusters within two dedicated technology suites. Each cluster tests a distinct approach to AI infrastructure including pipeline parallelism, heterogeneous orchestration and nanosecond optical circuit switching, with all five clusters aiming to become operational by early 2027. The deployment combines a deliberately diverse mix of GPUs and accelerators, including NVIDIA HGX B300 systems built on its Blackwell Ultra architecture, NVIDIA H200 NVL and RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell GPUs, and AMD Instinct MI350X accelerators - all of which are housed within Supermicro, MSI, Fujitsu PRIMERGY and Dell PowerEdge servers and powered by 100% certified renewable energy. "Kao Data's Harlow campus is perfectly situated between London and Cambridge, two of the UK's most important AI hubs, making it the ideal home for the Scaling Inference Lab," said David Stringer, Partnerships Lead, Scaling Inference Lab at CommonAI. "With advanced levels of security and a distinctive design, the campus provides us with a solid environment to welcome startups, investors and policymakers into the lab, and provides UK innovators with a neutral place to prove their technologies at rack scale - strengthening and supporting the Government's wider AI ambitions." "Kao Data has a long heritage of hosting some of the UK's most advanced AI and supercomputing workloads, and we are proud to become home to the Scaling Inference Lab," said Spencer Lamb, Chief Executive Officer at Kao Data. "The work taking place at our Harlow campus will help shape the next generation of UK AI, ensuring the country remains a leader in AI development while meeting the growing demand for sovereign, homegrown AI infrastructure and the resources needed to support the country's world-leading startup community." ARIA launched the Scaling Inference Lab earlier this year with a £50 million commitment and in June the UK Government announced more than £20 million in additional funding to establish a world-class national capability for new AI compute systems. As such, the Scaling Inference Lab will build a experimental clusters on a 6-month cadence, offering superfast access to shared, high-performance infrastructure resources so that innovative startups can plug their technologies into complete rack-scale systems and test them against the latest emerging workloads. The Scaling Inference Lab's technology partners include Quettaflop AI, Callosum and Oriole Networks, with further partners to be announced. To learn more about the lab and the hypotheses being tested, visit scalinginference.org. About Kao Data Kao Data leads the industry, pioneering the development and operation of UK and European data centres engineered for AI and advanced computing. With hyperscale-inspired facilities east and west of London, and northern England's largest data centre planned for Greater Manchester, we are home to technology's most demanding computing infrastructure. Its award-winning, NVIDIA DGX-Ready certified data centres are designed, engineered, and operated by one of the industry's most respected teams. Together, this provides colocation customers deploying mission-critical AI, enterprise, and cloud workloads with a secure, scalable, and sustainable compute environment, backed by a guarantee of 100% uptime. Kao Data's data centre portfolio includes more than 237 MW of IT load, either currently operational, under development or planned - all of which is under-pinned by the highest energy efficiency, sustainability and ESG credentials. Backed by leading international investors, and with several pioneering 'industry firsts' to our name, Kao Data represents the future in industrial scale, high-capacity data centres for AI and the next generation of compute. About CommonAI C.I.C. CommonAI CIC is a non-profit membership organisation dedicated to collaborative engineering for the safe and responsible development of foundational AI technologies. It builds shared infrastructure that organisations can use to run and improve AI systems in real-world conditions, with sovereignty, certainty and efficiency. About the Scaling Inference Lab Funded by ARIA and delivered by CommonAI, the Scaling Inference Lab is a neutral environment where emerging AI technologies are tested at rack scale alongside commercial systems. Building a new experimental cluster every six months, the lab gives startups shared infrastructure to validate their technologies, and provides governments and investors with data-driven insights to guide future AI infrastructure decisions. SOURCE Kao Data

Callosum's $100m seed put 24.1% of the holdco into a new preferred class. Callosum's $100m seed maps to a filed £57.20m Series Seed 2 issue for 24.1% of its holdco, while Atomico and Plural-linked directors joined the board. By Hagen Hoferichter · Published 23 August 2026 at 10:02 CEST Callosum's $100 million seed round looks different when the financing company's filings are put beside the announcement. The latest share allotment at Callosum Technologies Ltd records £57.20 million of cash for a new preferred class equal to 24.1% of the resulting issued shares. The same financing period changed the board. Two people publicly associated with Atomico and Plural joined the two founders on a four-seat board. That gives the new capital board-level access, but the filings do not establish investor control or disclose which institution owns which part of the new class. The finding is not that Callosum's $100 million headline is wrong. A round can close in tranches, combine instruments or include commitments that are not yet allotted. The narrower point is more useful for investors: the public record shows a £57.20 million preferred-share close, a 24.1% issued-share block and a new board configuration at the UK holdco that sits above the operating company. The filed close is smaller than the headline, but large enough to reset the denominator. Callosum announced the seed on 20 August 2026, describing a $100 million round led by Atomico with significant participation from Plural, DCVC and the UK Sovereign AI Unit. The company said the capital would support software that matches artificial-intelligence workloads to computing hardware. Bloomberg Law independently reported the round and its headline size. Companies House records for Callosum Technologies Ltd tell a more specific capital story. On 10 August, the holdco reported 4,329,819 Series Seed 2 Preferred shares allotted between 24 June and 8 July at £13.21 cash per share. The arithmetic is straightforward: | Filed position | Shares or cash | What it changes | | Shares before Series Seed 2 | 13,669,818 | Existing ordinary and Series Seed holders' base | | New Series Seed 2 Preferred | 4,329,819 | New class added in the June-July closing window | | Shares after the allotment | 17,999,637 | Post-issue issued-share denominator | | Registered cash for the new class | £57,196,908.99 | Filed-to-date cash, not a claimed full-round total | | New class as a share of issued capital | 24.055% | Simple issued-share dilution for earlier holders | Every earlier holder therefore owns a smaller percentage of the issued-share count after this allotment. The 24.1% figure is a share-count calculation, not a fully diluted ownership percentage. The preferred class has distribution-priority mechanics and one vote per share, while the amended articles contain the complete rights package. That distinction keeps the comparison honest. The filed amount is in pounds and the announcement is in dollars. The public record does not say whether the difference reflects exchange rates, a later tranche, commitments, grants, another instrument or a different measurement date. It does show exactly what was allotted and paid for in the reported close. Callosum built the financing in a new UK parent. The holdco was incorporated on 13 August 2025, shortly before the first major capital steps. A 26 August 2025 allotment issued 8,999,998 ordinary shares for non-cash consideration described as the legal and beneficial ownership of shares in SERNN, Inc. That structure placed the operating business under Callosum Technologies Ltd before the later cash financings. The 9 September 2025 allotment then added 3,043,301 Series Seed shares for £1.36 each and 803,556 Series Seed shares for non-cash consideration described as SAFE conversion. Further cash allotments followed in February and March 2026. By the time the Series Seed 2 class arrived, the holdco had 13,669,818 issued shares. Callosum's operating company record is therefore not the whole financing perimeter. The new preferred class sits in the parent that became the operating company's corporate person with significant control in August 2025. For diligence, the legal-entity choice matters: the round's dilution and governance entry are visible at the holdco, while the product and team are described at the Callosum operating-company level. This is the same analytical problem that appears in Amber's concentrated Series A issuance. The funding announcement supplies the event and participants. The registered allotment shows which legal entity issued the equity and how far the denominator moved. Those are different pieces of the financing map. Two investor-linked directors joined the founders. The capital reset was accompanied by a board change. Companies House filings dated 6 August record the appointments of Ian Hogarth and Alexandr Vidiborschii. Hogarth is publicly listed by Plural, while Vidiborschii appears on Atomico's investment team. Their appointments put two investor-affiliated individuals beside Callosum's two founders, Jascha Achterberg and Danyal Akarca. The board is therefore evenly split by role on the public record: two founders and two people associated with the lead and participating venture firms. That creates board-level access for the new financing group. It does not, on its own, prove a majority of voting directors, reserved-matter rights, a casting vote or unilateral control. The filings identify the people and their appointment dates, not the shareholder agreement behind the appointments. The timing is commercially relevant. The director appointments were filed shortly after the allotment window for the Series Seed 2 shares. The documents do not state whether the board rights were a condition of the round, part of a broader governance reset or an existing contractual right being exercised. They do show that capital and board composition changed in the same financing cycle. For a venture investor, that is a more concrete diligence point than the headline round size. A quarter of issued shares with a preferred distribution position can influence future financings even when the investor allocations are private. A four-person board can make information flow and strategic consent more immediate, while still leaving control questions unresolved. The ownership question is narrower than the headline question. The public announcement names Atomico, Plural, DCVC and the UK Sovereign AI Unit, but the Series Seed 2 SH01 does not allocate the 4,329,819 shares among them. It is therefore safe to describe the class as a 24.1% issued-share block and to connect the board appointments to named people with public ties to Atomico and Plural. It is not safe to assign a percentage to any one investor or to say the UK Sovereign AI Unit owns a particular part of the class. The same boundary applies to the $100 million figure. The registered £57.20 million is a filed amount for one class and closing window. It is not evidence of a funding shortfall, and adding the earlier public $10.25 million announcement to it would manufacture a total without knowing the instruments and dates that each announcement covers. The next decision-changing records are specific: a post-round shareholder list, the amended articles in readable form, and any shareholder or subscription agreement that sets allocation, preference and board rights. Those documents would answer what the 24.1% class means economically, whether further shares were committed but not allotted, and how the two investor-linked directors operate within the four-seat board. Callosum's financing is already legible at one level. A new UK holdco issued a preferred class for £57.20 million, the class represents 24.1% of the resulting issued shares, and two investor-linked directors joined the founders. The unresolved question is no longer whether the seed changed the cap table. It is how the private rights package turns that visible block and board access into economic and governance power.