Japanese venture capital fund Softbank Group Corp. has acquired United Kingdom chip start-up Graphcore for an undisclosed sum.
Grapcore said in a statement on last Thursday that the company has been acquired by SoftBank and under the deal, Graphcore becomes a wholly owned subsidiary of SoftBank and will continue to operate under the Graphcore name.
“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.
Meanwhile, Vikas J. Parekh, Managing Partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers, said that 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 artificial general intelligence (AGI) journey, we’re pleased to collaborate with Graphcore in this mission,” he added.
According to the statement, 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.