Japanese Consortium Buys British AI Chip Firm

British artificial intelligence, AI, chip firm Graphcore – once considered a potential rival to market leader Nvidia – has been bought by a Japanese conglomerate, Softbank.

Softbank has not disclosed how much it paid – but it is thought to be considerably less than the £2 billion the UK company was valued at after a financing round in 2020.

Graphcore head Nigel Toon told the BBC it was a tremendous endorsement of his team.

However, the deal is likely to raise questions about the UK’s ability to develop firms which can take on the biggest players in the booming AI chip market.