Bristol-based computer chip startup Graphcore has announced the closure of a $30m Series A round.
Investors in the round included Bosch, Samsung, Amadeus Capital, C4 Ventures, Draper Espirit, Foundation Capital and Pitango Capital.
Speaking about the raise, Nigel Toon, the CEO, said the startup was seeking to make machine learning faster, easier and more intelligent.
“Our technology will reduce the cost of accelerating AI applications in the cloud; the same technology will bring AI to low power consumer devices. It will enable recent deep learning applications to evolve more rapidly towards useful, general artificial intelligence,” he continued.
The company has created a software and hardware system based on its Intelligent Processing Unit (IPU) which it claims will make it easier and faster to produce applications, devices and machines that are far more intelligent .
Hermann Hauser, co-founder of Amadeus Capital Partners, said: “I have worked with Nigel and Simon before in their previous companies where they achieved over $1bn in successful exits for their investors. The team they have assembled is second to none. Machine learning is becoming a major market and Graphcore has the technology to lead this next wave of computing.”
Simon Cook, CEO Draper Esprit Plc, said Graphcore was one of the first investments made by the firm since it had gone public in London and Dublin.
“This is a sector we know well and a founding team that we have successfully backed before. Nigel and Simon have created an exciting company developing next generation processor technology and we are pleased to be investing at this key stage in its development,” concluded Cook.