British AI chip start-up Graphcore close to adding another $200 million in funding
New investment will bring Graphcore’s market valuation to more than $2 billion
Bristol-based startup Graphcore, which specialises in creating chips for artificial intelligence (AI), is close to raising around $200 million in a new funding round.
Citing people with knowledge of the matter, Bloomberg reported last week that the firm is currently in talks with investors to help raise ne
w funds that will bring Graphcore’s market valuation to more than $2 billion. The parties involved are yet to take a final decision on the investment round, and there could be a change in the amount of funding, the sources said. Graphcore has previously received investment from Samsung, Microsoft, BMW, Atomico and Demis Hassabis of DeepMind. In 2017, it raised $50 million from Sequoia Capital in a venture financing round. Earlier this year, the company raised $150 million in another investment round that helped bring its valuation to $1.95 billion. That round included participation from MG Investments, Baillie Gifford, and Mayfair Equity Partners, as well as from previous investors, such as Ahren Innovation Capital, Merian Chrysalis, Sofina, and Amadeus Capital Partners. According to Bloomberg, Graphcore currently has over $200 million of cash from previous investments, but decided to seek extra funds due to the interest of investors. Many investors are currently showing interest in start-ups focus on cutting-edge semiconductors, and Graphcore will hope to receive maximum benefit from this trend. Graphcore was founded by Nigel Toon and Simon Knowles in 2016. The firm’s main offering is its Intelligence Processing Unit (IPU), a next-gen chipset capable of executing high-level AI tasks. Graphcore claims that its IPU chip can complete BERT-basing training faster than GPUs using TensorFlow, while consuming 20 per cent less energy. In recent months, many other chipmakers, including Intel, AMD and Nvidia have also made huge investments into AI chip area and have accelerated their RD efforts to meet market demands. In November 2019, Graphcore announced a new partnership with Microsoft for IPU availability for use by Microsoft internal AI initiatives as well as for external customers on the Azure Cloud. In July, Graphcore unveiled a new GC200 chip and the M2000 IPU Machine, describing the new unit as the first AI computer able to achieve a petaflop of processing power in a unit “the size of a pizza box.” The company also said that it had no plans to sell the GC200 separately, and that the chip will come only with the M2000 IPU Machine.
Author: devz123@gmail.com(Dev Kundaliya)
Date: 2020-11-09
computing.co.uk
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