Subj : Japanese owner of Arm gets a bargain with Graphcore purchase  cou
To   : All
From : TechnologyDaily
Date : Sun Jul 21 2024 06:00:05

Japanese owner of Arm gets a bargain with Graphcore purchase  could British 
startup stymied by lack of support embrace Arm's licensing strategy to break 
Nvidia's stranglehold on AI?

Date:
Sun, 21 Jul 2024 04:52:33 +0000

Description:
SoftBank, the Japanese owner of Arm, has snapped up troubled British AI chip 
designer Graphcore.

FULL STORY
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UK-based AI chip designer Graphcore was, for a time, considered a potential 
rival to Nvidia and AMD, but fell on hard times after failing to capitalize 
on the AI boom. 

Back in February 2024, we wrote Graphcore desperately needed to raise 
significant funds by May if it was to survive, and that a number of potential 
buyers were circling the troubled firm. These included Arm, Japanese tech 
conglomerate SoftBank (which has a majority share in Arm), and OpenAI. 

SoftBank was always the most likely suitor, and it has now been confirmed as 
the new owner of Graphcore having splashed out somewhere between $400 and 
$500 million for company. The exact price hasnt been confirmed. But what 
next? 

Society is embracing the opportunities offered by foundation models, 
generative AI applications and new approaches to scientific discovery, said 
Vikas J. Parekh, Managing Partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers. Next 
generation semi-conductors and compute systems are essential in the AGI 
journey, were pleased to collaborate with Graphcore in this mission. 

Graphcore will become a wholly owned subsidiary of SoftBank (continuing to 
operate under the Graphcore name) and will likely enjoy closer ties with Arm. 
The companys headquarters will remain in Bristol, with offices in Cambridge, 
London, Gdansk and Hsinchu (it previously closed offices in Norway, Japan and 
South Korea). co-founder and CEO Nigel Toon will remain in charge at 
Graphcore. 

This is a tremendous endorsement of our team and their ability to build truly 
transformative AI technologies at scale, as well as a great outcome for our 
company, said Toon. Demand for AI compute is vast and continues to grow. 
There remains much to do to improve efficiency, resilience, and computational 
power to unlock the full potential of AI. In SoftBank, we have a partner that 
can enable the Graphcore team to redefine the landscape for AI technology. 

It remains to be seen what the future will look like for Graphcore and just 
how SoftBank will turn a profit from its latest acquisition. Licensing its IP 
to Arm seems like the obvious first step. More from TechRadar Pro Tiny AI 
chip designer could become Arm's sibling Nvidia promises up to 700% return on 
investment on GPU doing AI inference AMD teams up with Arm for new AI chip 
family



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Link to news story:
https://www.techradar.com/pro/japanese-owner-of-arm-gets-a-bargain-with-graphc
ore-purchase-could-british-startup-stymied-by-lack-of-support-embrace-arms-lic
ensing-strategy-to-break-nvidias-stranglehold-on-ai


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