SoftBank, the giant Japanese conglomerate that owns among its properties companies like ARM, has acquired the UK company “Graphcore” to strengthen its presence in the growing market of Artificial Intelligence. The company thus maintains its strategy to fully immerse itself in the design and manufacture of chips for AI, a growing market where all technology companies want a piece of the pie.
Graphcore is a company specializing in IPUs (Intelligence Processing Units), i.e. chips specifically created to execute instructions and processes related to Artificial Intelligence algorithms. Its products are integrated into data centers and cloud services, as well as offering software related to the processing of this type of infrastructure.
They are a relatively young company, although the first steps were taken in 2012, it was not until 2016 when the company was born as such.
Following the acquisition, Graphcore will continue to maintain a certain degree of independence, although it will benefit from the resources and funding of the Japanese giant. In fact, its headquarters will remain in Bristol and it will maintain offices in Cambridge, London, Gdansk and Hsinchu.
No monetary details of the transaction have been disclosed at this time, nor has it been revealed whether it will involve any kind of restructuring for Graphcore.
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Antonio Delgado
Computer Engineer by training, editor and hardware analyst at Geeknetic since 2011. I love to dissect everything that passes through my hands, especially the latest hardware that we receive here to do reviews. In my free time I tinker with 3D printers, drones and other gadgets. For anything you need, here I am.
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