Speaking for a friend. Yes there is, but quietly and slowly bootstrapped without publicity. Life events got in my friend's way so it's just as well they didn't take funding those years ago. VC in the UK is a pale shadow of VC in San Francisco anyway.

Very similar goals, including fab suitable for low-NRE open source hardware design iterations, but grander vision: making more of the hardware tools as well instead of purchasing them, building a stack that is not silicon-specific, extensive use of physics simulation and feedback to design specialised toolchains. That is partly because bootstrap finance requires inventing cheaper tooling than is available on the market, not just cheaper lithography.

Atomic Semi will almost certainly get their faster due to funding, better network, more pragmatism, track record of the people involved, and location. But friend's thing might go further into advanced and novel capabilities, eventually, if they continue with it.

Interestingly, their original goal was to stimulate a culture of open source hardware at the lower levels by providing a service to fabricate new designs at low cost, the way that has already happened with software, i.e. anyone can learn it in their bedroom and take it as far as their skills permit, causing a significant change of culture and knowledge sharing. That goal doesn't seem to be needed any more because of the Efabless-Skywater-Google collaboration making hobby-level ASIC fabrication available for free, and the rapid increase in available open source hardware design tools at steadily higher quality. And things like Atomic Semi emerging. The culture has already changed.