At Tech City News, we’re always keen to shine a light on those who make up the UK’s thriving technology community.
This week, we spoke with Nigel Toon, CEO and co-founder of Graphcore, an AI chip startup.
He shared some advice on what tech startup founders should do to keep their companies afloat and make them a success.
Tech vertical: Machine learning / AI
Funding: $30m Series A
Staff count: 40
Location: Bristol
Founded: 2014
Q: Where did the idea for Graphcore come from?
At Graphcore, we make processors for innovators looking to expand human potential with machine learning and AI technology. Simon (CTO and co-founder) and I started thinking about the fundamental compute challenges of machine learning workloads, which are completely different to other types of computing, about five years ago. Over the last three years we built the best team capable of re-thinking processors and produced a completely different solution. We’ve created a new processor that’s the first to be specifically designed for machine learning workloads – an Intelligent Processing Unit (IPU) that will set a new pace of innovation. We emerged from stealth in October, but we started exploring the idea a long time before that....