Bristol semiconductor firm Graphcore, whose products are driving the machine-learning and artificial intelligence (AI) revolution, is predicting more global growth after banking another multi-million dollar investment.
The latest $150m – from a group of major finance firms – takes the total invested in Graphcore since its launch in 2016 to more than $450m. 
It also means the firm, whose innovative products are used by Microsoft, Dell and other leading-edge tech firms, is now valued at $1.95bn.
It is less than 18 months since Graphcore became Bristol’s first tech ‘unicorn’ – the name given to a firm worth more than £1bn.
It said the latest investment would secure its position as the leading “pure-play machine intelligence AI processor” company. It also means it will start its new financial year with more than $300m in cash reserves to support its continued strong research and development (R&D) investments and global expansion.
Graphcore raised $200m at the end of 2018 which funded a massive growth phase for the business last year, including doubling the size of its team by attracting some of the world’s best software, silicon and hardware engineers.
It released a number of new products last year, including working with Microsoft on its Azure IPU (interconnect processing unit)-Cloud and the production launch of a new Dell Technologies IPU server.
It also made major increases in R&D and expanded its Bristol HQ and its centres in Cambridge, Oslo and Palo Alto in the US, Beijing and Hsinchu, Taiwan, where it has an operations facility.
Graphcore co-founder and chief executive officer Nigel Toon said: “2019 was a transformative year for Graphcore as we moved from development to a full commercial business with volume production products shipping.
“We were pleased to publicly announce our close partnership with Microsoft in November 2019, jointly announcing IPU availability for external customers on the Azure Cloud, as well as for use by Microsoft internal AI initiatives.
The latest $150m private placement attracted major financial asset managers, growth equity funds and investment trusts including Baillie Gifford, Mayfair Equity Partners, Merian Chrysalis and M&G.
Mr Toon added “Investment in R&D remains a priority. Customer engineering teams and field and support engineering teams are ramping fast to keep pace with customer growth.
“We have expanded all of our facilities and opened in new geographies as we build a leading technology company delivering IPU products which we believe will be the industry standard for AI compute.
“Demand for our Intelligence Processor Unit products is increasing at existing and new customers and the outlook for our business in 2020 is extremely positive.
“The major investments that we have made during 2018 and 2019 will help us to meet this strong demand by extending the capabilities of our technology and ecosystem and will support long-term revenue growth and returns for our investors.”
Mr Toon previously led two VC-backed Silicon Valley companies before founding Graphcore. Bath-based PicoChip, which was sold to US firm Mindspeed Technologies in 2012 and Bristol-based XMOS, in which Graphcore was incubated.
Prior to that he was co-founder of Icera, one of Bristol’s pioneering semiconductor companies, which was sold to NVIDIA in 2011.
