For an undisclosed amount, Japanese venture capital firm Softbank Group Corp. has acquired UK chip start-up Graphcore.
In a statement released, Grapcore announced that SoftBank had acquired the business. As a result of the agreement, Graphcore will remain a wholly owned subsidiary of SoftBank and carry on with its operations under the Graphcore brand.
“This is a tremendous endorsement of our team and their ability to build truly transformative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies at scale, as well as a great outcome for our company,” said Graphcore Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Nigel Toon.
“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,” he added.
According to SoftBank Investment Advisers Managing Partner Vikas J. Parekh, society is seizing the chance presented by generative AI applications, foundation models, and novel methods for scientific research.
“Next generation semi-conductors and compute systems are essential in the artificial general intelligence (AGI) journey, we’re pleased to collaborate with Graphcore in this mission,” he added.
The statement claims that Graphcore will keep funding the development of highly skilled positions across a variety of fields.
With offices in Gdansk, Hsinchu, Cambridge, London, and Bristol, the company’s headquarters are still located there.
