according to Graphcore Official website, this company is in troubleU.K. AI ChipsThe company has beenSoftBankAcquisition.
According to the agreement,Graphcore will become a wholly owned subsidiary of SoftBank and continue to operate under its existing nameThe parties did not disclose the specific transaction value.
Founded in 2016 in Bristol, a city in southwest England, Graphcore has launched several generations of AI workload accelerators called Intelligence Processing Units (IPUs for short).
Graphcore was once regarded as the "British version of Nvidia". However, since 2020, the company has not received new financing and has lost important orders from Microsoft, which has caused it toTight funds, operational difficulties, and failure to keep up with the trend in the field of AI chips.
Nigel Toon, co-founder and CEO of Graphcore, said:
This (referring to the acquisition by SoftBank) is a great recognition of our team and its ability to build truly transformative AI technology at scale, and is a great achievement for our company.
The demand for AI computing is huge and continues to grow. There is still much work to be done to improve the efficiency, elasticity, and computing power to unlock the full potential of AI.
Joining SoftBank gives us a partner who can help the Graphcore team redefine the landscape of AI technology.
According to foreign media TechCrunch, Nigel Toon confirmed to the outside world that Graphcore will not lay off employees after the acquisition and is considering increasing the number of employees in the UK.