SoftBank acquires AI chip designer Graphcore

Graphcore’s product line is called Bow, a family of Intelligence Processing Units (IPUs) specifically engineered for AI processing. The startup spent a couple of years pushing its IPUs, which it said were competitive with Nvidia products. However, the company has struggled in the past, with reports of layoffs as well as the closing its China office.

“This is a tremendous endorsement of our team and their ability to build truly transformative AI technologies at scale, as well as a great outcome for our company,” said Graphcore co-founder and CEO Nigel Toon in a statement.

The deal could represent quite a turnaround for SoftBank, which tried to get out of the CPU business and sell off Arm to Nvidia for $40 billion, but the acquisition met stiff resistance in the UK. After the Nvidia-Arm deal went bust, SoftBank took the company public in September of last year while retaining a majority of Arm’s shares. That has proven lucrative; Arm’s stock price has risen by 185% since the IPO.