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December 29, 2020
5 minutes read

AI Chipmaker Graphcore Nabs $222M Round

Graphcore, a British startup that develops artificial intelligence chips, has raised $222 million in a Series E funding round that values…

Co-founder and CEO of Graphcore Nigel Toon

Graphcore, a British startup that develops artificial intelligence chips, has raised $222 million in a Series E funding round that values the company at $2.77 billion post-money.

The new funding round boosts the total amount of funding raised by Graphcore to over $710 million and boosts its valuation from $2 billion when it raised funding in February this year now to roughly $2.8 billion.

The new round was led by the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board, with participation from Fidelity, Schroders, Draper Esprit, and Baillie Gifford.

With the new round, Graphcore says it expects to have over $440 million of cash on hand to support its future growth. Developing a new type of microprocessor specifically designed to support artificial intelligence workloads, Graphcore is aiming for global expansion and bigger investments in research and development.

Graphcore was notably founded by two serial entrepreneurs, Nigel Toon and Simon Knowles, who sold their previous chip company, Icera, to Nvidia for over $400 million in 2011.

Icera made baseband processors for 3G and 4G cellular phones and tablets. After its sale, Toon and Knowles teamed up to form another chip company, this time one focused on AI and named it Graphcore.

Graphcore was founded in 2016 and has grown rapidly, now employing around 450 people. With now over $710 million in venture funding, UK-based Graphcore is one of the biggest-funded startups in the AI chip industry and more so one of the biggest-funded AI startups from the UK.

Graphcore has already begun shipping products in volume to customers, products that were unveiled this year. Filings in the UK indicate that the company recorded revenues of $10.1 million in 2019 and a pre-tax loss of $96 million in the same year.

Graphcore is going head-to-head with bigger-funded and more established competitors such as Intel and Nvidia as well as a handful of other well-funded AI chip startups across the globe.

Photo: Co-founder and CEO of Graphscore Nigel Toon by TechCrunch is licensed under CC BY 2.0