Graphcore secures additional $150 million in new capital

The private placement has been made by financial asset managers, growth equity funds and investment trusts and includes new investors Baillie Gifford, Mayfair Equity Partners and M&G Investments alongside existing investors including Merian Chrysalis, Ahren Innovation Capital, Amadeus Capital Partners and Sofina. An extension of Graphcore’s Series D round which closed in December 2018, this new D2 round brings the total investment in Graphcore to date to over USD 450 million at a valuation of USD 1.95 billion. Graphcore is extremely well capitalized, holding over USD 300 million in cash reserves after this new investment, to support the company’s continuing, major R&D investment and global expansion. “2019 was a transformative year for Graphcore as we moved from development to a full commercial business with volume production products shipping,” says Nigel Toon, Graphcore CEO in a press release. “During 2019 we were able to attract the very best software, silicon and hardware engineers to join our team, which has more than doubled in size. Investment in R&D remains a priority. Customer engineering teams and field and support engineering teams are ramping fast to keep pace with customer growth. We have expanded all of our facilities and opened in new geographies as we build a leading technology company delivering IPU products which we believe will be the industry standard for AI compute,” the CEO continues.