Acquisition
Jul 2024SoftBank acquired Graphcore for undisclosed terms; Graphcore became a wholly owned subsidiary. The company retained its name and Bristol headquarters.
SourceCompany research
Public company, workplace, funding, and market signals
Updated Aug 5, 2026
Overview
Graphcore is a Bristol-founded AI-semiconductor company, now a wholly owned SoftBank subsidiary, developing a complete AI-compute stack spanning specialized silicon, systems and software for machine-learning training and inference. It was once positioned as a European challenger to Nvidia and is now being expanded within SoftBank’s AI and semiconductor ecosystem.
Primary product
Colossus Intelligence Processing Units (IPUs), including the MK2 GC200, IPU-M2000/IPU-POD systems, and the Poplar SDK/software stack.
Founded
2016
Headquarters
Bristol, United Kingdom
Team size
501-1000
Work style
Hybrid
Industry
Semiconductor manufacturing
Sub-industry
AI accelerators and machine-learning computing infrastructure
Offices
Bristol, United Kingdom (HQ)
London, United Kingdom
Cambridge, United Kingdom
Austin, United States
Milpitas, United States
Bengaluru, India
Gdańsk, Poland
Hsinchu, Taiwan
Taipei, Taiwan
Business model
Sale of IPU processors, accelerator cards and IPU systems
Enterprise AI-compute infrastructure
Cloud-based AI compute / hosted IPU services
Software and SDK ecosystem supporting IPU development
Funding
Stage
Acquired / SoftBank-owned, with post-acquisition corporate funding
Total raised
$1.1B
Latest round
SoftBank corporate/private-equity funding · Apr 2026
Latest amount
$457M
SoftBank corporate/private-equity funding
Apr 2026 · SoftBank Group
Jul 2024 · SoftBank Group
People & investors
Leadership
Nigel Toon
Co-founder and Executive Chairman
Marcus McElroy
General Manager
Nick Bishop
Chief Financial Officer
Sally Doherty
Chief Marketing Officer
John Walsh
Chief Operating Officer
Helen Byrne
VP, AI Technology
Rami Sinno
SVP, Systems
Founders
Simon Knowles
Co-founder and former CTO
Work & culture
Public careers materials emphasize intellectually curious engineering, shared interests and activities, work-life balance, trust and responsibility, continuous learning, and inclusive collaboration across silicon, hardware and software teams.
Work style
Hybrid
Compensation
Public evidence indicates formal reward and progression reviews and legally compliant compensation, but no reliable company-wide salary ranges were identified. Some external job-market tracking suggests compensation transparency is limited.
Benefits
Private medical insurance
Dental cover and health cash plan
Mental-wellbeing support
Gym membership discount
Pension matched up to 5% (UK)
Cycle-to-work and travel-to-work schemes
Flexible working hours
Generous parental leave
Unlimited annual leave
Personal development plans
Management-development programs
Education and training allowances
O’Reilly online learning
Free snacks, drinks and coffee
Product & market
Pricing
No public standard price list identified; hardware appears enterprise/quote-based, while cloud access is capacity- and usage-oriented.
Differentiators
- —Purpose-built IPU architecture rather than a GPU-derived design
- —Very high parallelism and distributed on-chip memory
- —Co-designed Poplar compiler and software stack
- —IPU-Fabric and IPU-POD scale-out systems
- —Open-source PopLibs, PopART and TensorFlow-for-IPU components
- —End-to-end ownership of silicon, systems and AI software
Technology
Colossus MK1/MK2 IPU
GC200 processor
IPU-M2000
IPU-POD and IPU-Fabric
Poplar SDK
PopLibs
Scale & contact
Estimated revenue
Approximately $2.7M-$10M annually; the $2.7M figure is a reported 2022 revenue figure, not a current audited estimate.
Signals & risks
Layoff
Jan 2024Reuters reported that Graphcore had cut headcount by about one-fifth to 494 employees before the acquisition.
SourceShutdown
Jan 2024Operations in Norway, Japan and South Korea were reported closed amid restructuring and financial pressure.
Latest news
Data Center Dynamics · Jul 2026
Reported historical losses, revenue decline, headcount reduction and closure of several country operations.
CNBC · May 2026
Companies House filings indicated a $457m SoftBank injection into Graphcore, following the 2024 acquisition.
Reuters · Jul 2024
Covered the undisclosed acquisition, restructuring context and Graphcore’s continuing Bristol base.
Graphcore · Jul 2024
Company announcement describing the acquisition, SoftBank ownership and strategic AI-compute mission.
Open Positions
219 jobs at Graphcore
Staff Engineering Operations Technical Program Manager
On-site
Program Management
Austin, Texas, United States
1d ago
On-site
Full-time