Our warmest congratulations to Somervillians Meryem Arik (2016, Physics) and Dr Jamie Dborin (2014, Physics) on securing over £9m in funding for their AI startup Doubleword.
Doubleword is a homegrown UK start-up that offers companies the means to ‘self-host’ their artificial intelligence functions, thereby exerting greater control over the technology. Founded in 2021 by
Doubleword founders Meryem Arik, Fergus Finn and Jamie Dborin
Arik, Dborin and third co-founder Dr Fergus Finn, Doubleword announced its successful funding round earlier this month, naming the leading venture capital firm Dawn Capital as principal backer.
Doubleword’s USP is that it solves the ‘inference problem’, the costly process by which trained artificial intelligence models apply their understanding to generate original output in real time. Doubleword promises to break this deadlock by enabling one-click deployment of any open-source, domain-specific, or custom Al model via a stable infrastructure.
Meryem Arik, who is Doubleword’s CEO, commented of the news: “Our customers want to build AI-powered applications, not AI infrastructure. With this funding, we’ll continue to grow our team globally and invest in our platform to solve even more of the inference problem for our customers.”
Jamie Dborin, Doubleword’s CSO, added, “We’re building the infrastructure that makes it easy for any company to privately deploy and run powerful AI models in production.”
Peter Kyle MP, the UK’s science, innovation and technology secretary, also commented on Doubleword’s funding success, noting that: “AI will help us to deliver growth for our economy and new opportunities for people up and down the country, so it’s vital businesses have the confidence to adopt and realise its potential. Doubleword’s work is helping set the standard for how companies can do exactly that – adopting AI quickly and efficiently so they can realise their ambitions and allow their workers and customers to thrive in the age of AI.”
Meryem and Jamie both read Physics at Somerville, where they excelled both in and outside the lab. During her time at Somerville, Meryem won a blue with OURFC and two sets of blades with SCBC,which she also captained. She even found time to found the Somerville WRFC. Jamie was likewise a devotee of the rugby, captaining the men’s rugby team from 2016-17.
Jan Royall, Principal of Somerville College, said of the news, “Meryem and Jamie’s extraordinary achievement, alongside the rest of the Doubleword team, is eloquent testimony to the way in which education and entrepreneurial spirit go hand in hand not only in Oxford but across the UK, creating a unique climate of opportunity for technologies new and old. They are absolutely inspirational!”
Doubleword CEO Meryem enjoying her first visit to high table with Principal Jan Royall, Somerville, June 2025