Graphcore, a Bristol, England, UK-based AI computing company, has been acquired by SoftBank Group Corp.
The amount of the deal was not disclosed. Under the deal, Graphcore becomes a wholly owned subsidiary of SoftBank and will continue to operate under the Graphcore name.
Led by co-founder and CEO Nigel Toon, Graphcore has created a new processor, the Intelligence Processing Unit (IPU), specifically designed for artificial intelligence. The IPU’s architecture means developers can run current machine learning models orders of magnitude faster. More importantly, it lets AI researchers undertake entirely new types of work, not possible using current technologies, to drive the next great breakthroughs in general machine intelligence.
Graphcore will continue to invest in the creation of high-skilled jobs spanning a range of disciplines.
The company’s headquarters remain in Bristol, with offices in Cambridge, London, Gdansk and Hsinchu.
FinSMEs
12/07/2024