Graphcore

Graphcore is a Bristol-based semiconductor company founded in 2016 by Nigel Toon and Simon Knowles that designs Intelligence Processing Units (IPUs), specialised chips and compute systems built for AI and machine learning workloads. It reached unicorn status with a 2018 Series D at a $1.7B valuation and raised over $700M in total from investors including Sequoia, Atomico, Microsoft, Dell and BMW, but struggled to gain market share against Nvidia. In July 2024 it was acquired by Japan's SoftBank Group, reportedly for around $500M, and now operates as a SoftBank subsidiary building next-generation AI compute.