Japan’s SoftBank has officially acquired a U.K.-based artificial intelligence chip developer chipmaker Graphcore, in an undisclosed deal.
Cofounder and CEO Nigel Toon acknowledged that challenges had been experienced by the company but stated that the SoftBank acquisition would provide Graphcore with the tools it needed to compete on a global scale during a media briefing.
Graphcore, a company founded in 2016, has developed a new processor called the Intelligence Processing Unit (IPU) that is intended primarily for artificial intelligence applications.
According to the company, developers may run existing machine learning models orders of magnitude quicker because of the IPU’s unique architecture.
It also enables academics studying artificial intelligence to take on completely new kinds of tasks that are not achievable with the tools available now, which will power the field’s next major discoveries.
Britain’s Graphcore was once hailed as a contender to Nvidia, a company whose worth has skyrocketed due to the increasing demand for AI computer processors. However, Graphcore has had difficulty obtaining the funding required to remain competitive.
“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,” said Graphcore co-founder and CEO Nigel Toon.
Although the $500 million amount has been floating about in various reports for months, Toon stayed mum on the specifics during the early press briefing.
“We have agreed with SoftBank that we’re not going into the details of the deal; whether anything comes out in the future, we’ll see,” Toon said.
Commenting on the acquisition, 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.”
We earlier reported that Nvidia is entering the Middle East and North Africa with its recent partnership with Ooredoo, the largest telecom company in Qatar.
