TECH BYTES WORDS MATTHEW GOODING
The latest news and updates from the Cambridge Cluster
GRAPHCORE EXPANDS INTO CAMBRIDGE
Britain’s newest $1bn tech unicorn is to create 500 new jobs in Cambridge, as chipmaker Graphcore expands into the city as part of its ambition to build a global technology company supporting innovation in machine intelligence. It is currently weighing up several options for the location of its new Cambridge centre, but has already started hiring across a range of positions. Nigel Toon, CEO and co-founder of Graphcore, said, “Cambridge is world-leading when it comes to machine intelligence innovation and silicon and software engineering, so it’s only natural that we expand to the city as we seek to grow and hire the best talent. Our ambition is for the IPU to become the worldwide standard for AI compute. We’re building an exceptional team to help us do that, and we’re excited to unlock more potential in Cambridge.”
Founded in 2016, Graphcore has developed a new type of processor specifically designed for machine learning and artificial intelligence applications. It has already proved popular with customers, and high- volume production is ramping up to meet customer demand for its IPU PCIe processor cards. The company hit unicorn status in December when it raised over $300m from backers including BMW, Microsoft, Bosch, Dell and Samsung Electronics. The funding round valued the company at $1.7bn. Other investors include some familiar names from the Cambridge Cluster, such as Demis Hassabis, who co-founded DeepMind, now owned by Google, and Zoubin Ghahramani, a Cambridge University academic and chief scientist at Uber. Hermann Hauser’s Amadeus Capital Partners also have a stake in the company.
Nigel Toon and Simon Knowles, co-founders of Britain's newest tech unicorn Graphcore, which is poised to expand into Cambridge.
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