LONDON: British chipmaker Graphcore said Friday that it has been acquired by Japanese digital giant SoftBank Group Corp.

Graphcore, which makes semiconductors for artificial intelligence systems, became a wholly owned subsidiary of SoftBank Group. It will continue its business, maintaining its name.

With the move, SoftBank Group hopes to reinforce its AI-related operations.

The value of the acquisition has not been announced, but according to the business daily Financial Times, the deal was worth about 600 million dollars.

Graphcore, founded in 2016, once gathered attention as a rival of US chipmaker Nvidia Corp. However, the Bristol-based company posted a pretax loss of 205 million dollars in 2022 as it struggled to commercialize its technologies.

“In SoftBank, we have a partner that can enable the Graphcore team to redefine the landscape for AI technology,” Graphcore CEO Nigel Toon said in a statement.

JIJI Press