UK AI chip startup Graphcore has been acquired by SoftBank, the latest deal aimed at revolutionizing the competitive AI landscape.

Graphcore specializes in SoIC-WoW (Wafer–on-Wafer) IPUs (intelligence processing units), designed to compete against the industry-standard GPUs that power AI models. The company says its IPUs offer significant benefits over traditional GPUs.

The IPU is a completely new kind of massively parallel processor, co-designed from the ground up with the Poplar® SDK, to accelerate machine intelligence.

The compute and memory architecture are designed for AI scale-out. The hardware is developed together with the software, delivering a platform that is easy to use and excels at real-world applications.

Graphcore co-founder and CEO Nigel Toon says his company has joined SoftBank, but will be a wholly owned SoftBank subsidiary, but Will continue to remain headquartered in Bristol and operate under the Graphcore name.

“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 Graphcore co-founder and CEO Nigel 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.”

“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, we’re pleased to collaborate with Graphcore in this mission.”

The deal already has regulatory approval. The decision for Graphcore to continue operating from the UK under its own name may have played a part in winning regulatory approval. Critics in the UK have previously voiced concern that the UK could lose control of its semiconductor industry, with those concerns being a factor in the UK opposing Nvidia’s attempt to purchase Arm Holdings.

SoftBank being the buyer likely played a role in regulatory approval as well, since SoftBank owned Arm before it went public. Much like Graphcore, Arm had the freedom to operate largely independently, and maintained its headquarters in the UK.

The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.