Bristol AI chip designer bags $50m from Valley VC

AI chip startup Graphcore has announced today a $50m deal with venture capital firm Sequoia Capital.

This is in addition to the $60m the upstart, based in Bristol, UK, raised over the 18 months in previous funding rounds, from backers including Dell and Samsung.

Sequoia has previously put money into some quietly successful companies you might have heard of, such as Apple, Google, YouTube and PayPal, as well as another chip maker, GPU-builder Nvidia.

Graphcore CEO Nigel Toon said in a statement on the company website that Sequoia had "reached out" to it after their networked companies pointed out Graphcore as they investigated AI hardware companies.

"Having the opportunity to partner with Sequoia Capital on this mission is awesome," Toon enthused. ®