SoftBank Expands AI Portfolio with Graphcore Acquisition
BRISTOL, England, July 12, 2024 -- Graphcore today announced that the company has been acquired by SoftBank Group Corp. 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 AI technologies at scale, as well as a great outcome for our company," said Graphcore co-founder and CEO 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."
"Society is embracing the opportunities offered by foundation models, generative AI applications and new approaches to scientific discovery", said Vikas J. Parekh, Managing Partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers. "Next generation semi-conductors and compute systems are essential in the AGI journey, we're pleased to collaborate with Graphcore in this mission."
Graphcore is recognized as a leading employer in the UK's high tech economy and 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.
About Graphcore
Graphcore technology lets innovators create the next breakthroughs in machine intelligence to enhance human potential. The Company is the inventor of the Intelligence Processing Unit (IPU), specifically designed for the needs of current and next-generation artificial intelligence workloads. Graphcore’s IPU-POD data center systems, for scale up and scale out AI compute, offer the ability to run large models across multiple IPUs, or to share the compute resource between different users and workloads.
About Softbank
Since its founding, SoftBank Corp. and its subsidiaries have sought to harness the Information Revolution to contribute to the wellbeing of people and society. Softbank aims to contribute to people’s happiness through the Information Revolution, and become the corporate group needed most by people around the world. To achieve this vision, SoftBank strives to create an ideal society where everyone can feel the convenience, comfort, and safety, by the power of digital technology on top of the strong foundation of Softbank's businesses. Learn more at www.softbank.jp.
Source: Graphcore
