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Robert Bosch Venture Capital participates in Graphcore’s USD 200 million Series D

A world leading AI chipmaker valued at USD 1.7bn

  • Early backer Robert Bosch Venture Capital continues its support after leading Series A
  • Machine intelligence training and inference at 10x to 100x the speed of current solutions
  • Investment Partner Dr. Hongquan Jiang: “Graphcore is changing the paradigm of AI computing in the cloud and at the edge”

Aron Bahnmüller >

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Aron Bahnmüller

18 December 2018, Stuttgart. Robert Bosch Venture Capital GmbH (RBVC), the corporate venture capital company, of the Bosch Group, participated in the just announced financing round of Graphcore. The AI (Artificial Intelligence) chipmaker just finalized a new USD 200 million funding round, which values the company at USD 1.7 billion.

A new kind of processor

Graphcore has built a completely new kind of processor and software for AI and machine intelligence. It has been shipping first products to early access customers and generated first revenues this year, just two years after the company was founded. High volume production is now ramping up to meet customer demand for its Intelligent Processing Unit (IPU) PCIe processor cards. Graphcore’s IPU is the first processor to be designed specifically for machine intelligence training and inference and delivers an increase in speed of 10x to 100x compared to today’s hardware. “Graphcore is changing the paradigm of AI computing in the cloud and at the edge. The highly efficient and massively parallel IPU technology can significantly improve AI driven products in many categories such as autonomous driving and security”, says Dr. Hongquan Jiang, Investment Partner at RBVC and board member of Graphcore. “We are very excited to accompany Graphcore’s journey in becoming a global leading AI company”.

Rapid growth towards a global leading AI company

The company is currently in a stage of rapid growth and has tripled the size of its team in 2018. This rate of growth will now accelerate significantly driven by the new investment. The funding is a further step towards fulfilling the company’s ambition to build a global technology company, focused on this new and fast-growing machine intelligence market. RBVC led Graphcore’s Series A in 2016 and has continuously supported the company that has now raised over USD 300 million in funding. RBVC Managing Director Dr. Ingo Ramesohl says: “Graphcore is a perfect fit for the RBVC portfolio in artificial intelligence technologies. We see enormous business potential with Bosch.”

A new age of computing

Nigel Toon, CEO and co-founder of Graphcore, says: “Machine intelligence marks the start of a new age of computing which needs a radically different type of processor and software tools. This new, fast growing market creates the opportunity for Graphcore to build a major global technology company that can help innovators in AI achieve important breakthroughs.”

Robert Bosch Venture Capital GmbH (RBVC) is the corporate venture capital company of the Bosch Group, a leading global supplier of technology and services. RBVC invests worldwide in innovative start-up companies at all stages of their development. Its investment activities focus on technology companies working in areas of business of current and future relevance for Bosch, above all, automation and electrification, energy efficiency, enabling technologies, and healthcare systems. RBVC also invests in services and business models that are relevant to the above-mentioned areas of business. Furthermore, RBVC enables co-innovation between Bosch and startup through the Open Bosch Program.

Additional information is available at www.rbvc.com

About Graphcore
Graphcore’s Intelligence Processing Unit (IPU) hardware and software lets innovators create next generation machine intelligence solutions. The IPU is the first processor to be designed specifically for Machine Intelligence and delivers between 10x to 100x speed up compared to today’s hardware. Graphcore has raised over $300m in funding from leading financial and strategic investors and is headquartered in Bristol UK, with offices in London UK, Oslo Norway, Palo Alto USA and Beijing China.

The Bosch Group is a leading global supplier of technology and services. It employs roughly 421,000 associates worldwide (as of December 31, 2022). The company generated sales of 88.2 billion euros in 2022. Its operations are divided into four business sectors: Mobility, Industrial Technology, Consumer Goods, and Energy and Building Technology. As a leading IoT provider, Bosch offers innovative solutions for smart homes, Industry 4.0, and connected mobility. Bosch is pursuing a vision of mobility that is sustainable, safe, and exciting. It uses its expertise in sensor technology, software, and services, as well as its own IoT cloud, to offer its customers connected, cross-domain solutions from a single source. The Bosch Group’s strategic objective is to facilitate connected living with products and solutions that either contain artificial intelligence (AI) or have been developed or manufactured with its help. Bosch improves quality of life worldwide with products and services that are innovative and spark enthusiasm. In short, Bosch creates technology that is “Invented for life.” The Bosch Group comprises Robert Bosch GmbH and its roughly 470 subsidiary and regional companies in over 60 countries. Including sales and service partners, Bosch’s global manufacturing, engineering, and sales network covers nearly every country in the world. With its more than 400 locations worldwide, the Bosch Group has been carbon neutral since the first quarter of 2020. The basis for the company’s future growth is its innovative strength. At 136 locations across the globe, Bosch employs some 85,500 associates in research and development, of which nearly 44,000 are software engineers.

Additional information is available online at www.bosch.com, www.iot.bosch.com, www.bosch-press.com, www.twitter.com/BoschPress.

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