Graphcore

Graphcore is a company developing semiconductor accelerators for artificial intelligence and machine learning that is headquartered in Bristol, United Kingdom and was founded in 2016 by Nigel Toon and Simon Knowles.

Graphcore makes three products which include an intelligence processing unit (IPU) server for cloud computing and machine intelligence called C2, The intelligence processing unit (IPU) made specifically for training machine intelligence models and inference, and a software stack called Poplar for running their semiconductor products efficiently. The companies semiconductors are designed to be used for enhancing machine intelligence for applications in the following industries finance, life science, healthcare, and telecommunications.

Funding

Series A

On October 31, 2016 Graphcore announced raising $30 million in series A funding from Samsung Strategy and Innovation Center, Robert Bosch Venture Capital, Amadeus Capital Partners, Pitango Venture Capital, Foundation Capital, Draper Esprit, Dell Technologies Capital, and C4 Ventures.

Series B

On July 20, 2017 Graphcore announced raising $30 million in funding from Atomico (lead investor), Robert Bosch Venture Capital, Pitango Venture Capital, Foundation Capital, Draper Esprit, Zoubin Gharamani, Scott Gray, Pieter Abbeel, Ilya Sutskever, Grag Brockman, and Demis Hassabis. The company plans on using their series B funding to help launch their first intelligence processing unit (IPU) hardware, and increasing their enterprise data centers and cloud environments.

Series C

On November 12, 2017 Graphcore announced raising $50 million in series C funding from Sequoia Capital (lead investor), Samsung Catalyst Fund, Robert Bosch Venture Capital, Pitango Venture Capital, Draper Esprit, Dell Technologies Capital, C4 Ventures, and Amadeus Capital Partners.

Series D

On December 18, 2018 Graphcore announced raising $200 million in series D funding from Microsoft (lead investor), BMWi Ventures (lead investor), Sofina, Robert Bosch Venture Capital, Pitango Venture Capital, Foundation Capital, Draper Esprit, Dell Technologies Capital, and C4 Ventures. After announcing their series D funding Graphcore was valued at $1.7 billion.