SoftBank-backed Graphcore to invest £1 bn in India, open AI chip hub

Graphcore will invest up to £1 billion over the next decade in India and set up an artificial intelligence (AI) engineering office in Bengaluru, the British artificial intelligence (AI) chipmaker said.

 

The company, owned by Japan’s SoftBank, will also create 500 new semiconductor jobs, with an immediate target of hiring about 100 experienced engineers in areas such as silicon logic design, physical design, verification, characterisation, and ‘bringup’ to kick off the centre.

 

“Since the acquisition, we have been expanding the team and building a road map of products at a rapid pace. We recognised that, besides the team in the UK, we needed to have a second team that could take the ball and run with it,” Nigel Toon, chief executive officer of Graphcore, told Business Standard.

 

SoftBank, led by Masayoshi Son, acquired Graphcore for an undisclosed amount last year after it struggled to secure funding to compete at the top level. Since the acquisition, the Japanese conglomerate has announced a series of AI compute infrastructure initiatives, including the $500 billion Stargate infrastructure project in partnership with OpenAI and Oracle. 

 

Toon said the aim is to have a team that will take ownership of a product alongside the product development team in the UK. The decision to set up shop in India, he added, was also made after consultations with Arm Holdings, the leading chip designer also owned by SoftBank.

 

Graphcore’s engineers in Bengaluru will develop semiconductor products for use by AI practitioners to help address challenges in drug discovery, public health, environmental sustainability, and business productivity.

 

“We are building chips of 3 nanometre (nm) and 2 nm, which are only available with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. So it will be a while before we think about another semiconductor manufacturing hub,” Toon said when asked if the company would consider making chips in India in the future.

 

He added that while manufacturing in India might not be on the radar, the technical skills of Indian engineers will be critical. “Even as a fabless chip company, when you deliver or test a chip, you need the skills that engineers here possess.”