On July 12th, British AI chip company Graphcore announced that it had officially been acquired by SoftBank Group of Japan. This transaction put an end to long-standing market speculation and marked the end of this company, once regarded as a star enterprise in the British AI hardware field.

Founded in 2016, Graphcore is headquartered in Bristol, UK and specializes in developing "Intelligence processing units" (IPUs) for AI workloads, which were once seen as a strong competitor to Nvidia. It has been favored by well-known investors such as Microsoft and Sequoia Capital. It has raised a total of approximately $700 million in funding and was valued at nearly $3 billion at the end of 2020.

However, the competition in the AI hardware industry is intense, and the demand for funds is huge. Graphcore has failed to grow into a European AI chip giant as expected, and its performance has continued to be under pressure in recent years. Nigel Toon, the co-founder and CEO of the company, said that the investment scale needed in the AI field is "amazingly huge" and far beyond the scope that Graphcore can bear as an independent company.

Regarding the acquisition price, Toon refused to disclose the specific number but denied the previous $500 million claim. He told the media that it is a "good result" for existing employees and investors. However, reports indicate that some former employees' stock was cleared in this transaction, which seems to suggest that the acquisition price may be lower than Graphcore's previous funding amount.

SoftBank said that Graphcore will play an important role in its AI strategy. Vikas J. Parekh, Managing Partner of SoftBank's Investment Advisor, emphasized that "Next-generation semiconductors and computing systems are critical on the path to Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)."

This acquisition has been approved by regulatory agencies in the UK and the US. Graphcore will continue to operate as a wholly-owned subsidiary of SoftBank, retaining its brand name and headquartered in Bristol. Toon and CTO Simon Knowles will continue to serve as company executives and directors.

This transaction marks another important asset of the British semiconductor industry in the hands of Masayoshi Son. Previously, SoftBank acquired the British chip design company Arm for $31 billion in 2016 and listed it separately last year. Currently, Arm's market value is close to $200 billion, showing SoftBank's investment insight in the chip field.

Son has previously stated at SoftBank's shareholders' meeting that SoftBank's mission is to achieve ASI (Artificial Super Intelligence).

He believes that:

ASI is an upgraded version of AGI (Artificial General Intelligence). AGI refers to an artificial system with general intelligence, whose intelligence level is equivalent to the smartest humans, even surpassing one to ten times.

AGI can surpass human wisdom and knowledge in all aspects. However, AGI is only a stage, and ASI is much more powerful, with an intelligence level of 100 times or even 10000 times that of humans.

Son emphasized that AI chips are indispensable in the world of ASI. SoftBank will work with companies such as Nvidia, AMD, and Intel to establish AI data centers worldwide. This acquisition of Graphcore also represents its further ambition in AI.

It is worth mentioning that in early 2019, Son sold about 5% of his Nvidia shares for about $3.6 billion. These shares are now worth more than $160 billion.