• Swindon & Wiltshire M&A, deals
• Monday July 15 2024
• Author Name: Peter Davison

AI chipmaker Graphcore acquired by Japanese investor

Bristol-headquartered artificial intelligence microchip maker Graphcore has been acquired by Japanese investment firm Softbank Group.

Under the deal, the company will continue to operate under the Graphcore name and its headquarters will remain in Bristol.

Graphcore has created a new processor, the Intelligence Processing Unit (IPU). Specifically designed for artificial intelligence, it can run current machine learning models orders of magnitude faster.

The firm – which was once touted as a rival to global leader Nvidia, and was valued at £2.1 billion in 2020 – slashed its workforce by a fifth last year as it struggled to secure funding.

It had been hoping to pick up the contract to help build the government-backed multi-million pound Isambard-AI, the UK’s most powerful supercomputer, which is housed at the University of Bristol.

Instead, the contract to supply the microchips went to California-based Nvidia.

Softbank, which has acquired Graphcore for an undisclosed sum, owns a share in British chipmaker Arm, which it acquired in a £26 billion deal in 2016.

In a statement, co-founder and CEO Nigel Toon said: “This is a tremendous endorsement of our team and their ability to build truly transformative AI technologies at scale, as well as a great outcome for our company.

“Demand for AI compute is vast and continues to grow. There remains much to do to improve efficiency, resilience, and computational power to unlock the full potential of AI.

“In SoftBank, we have a partner that can enable the Graphcore team to redefine the landscape for AI technology.”

Vikas J. Parekh, managing partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers, said: “Society is embracing the opportunities offered by foundation models, generative AI applications and new approaches to scientific discovery.

“Next generation semi-conductors and compute systems are essential in the AGI journey, we’re pleased to collaborate with Graphcore in this mission.”