SoftBank Invests Over $450 Million in British AI Chip Firm Graphcore

Japanese Investment giant SoftBank has injected more than $450millionintoGraphcore,theBritishAIchipcompanyitacquiredin2024,asitdoublesdownonAIinfrastructureandhardware\mathrm{.}AccordingtoaUKCompaniesHousefiling,Graphcoreissuedasinglesharevaluedat$457 million on April 10. A Graphcore spokesperson confirmed the funding came from SoftBank.

At the time of the acquisition, SoftBank sAId Graphcore would collaborate on developing artificial general intelligence (AGI) — AI that matches or surpasses human Intelligence. A person familiar with the matter said this fresh capital represents a portion of the funding Graphcore expects to receive from SoftBank this year.

Once seen as a potential rival to NVIDIA, Graphcore had raised hundreds of millions of dollars but struggled to gain commercial momentum before SoftBank stepped in. Since the acquisition, SoftBank has unveiled a series of major AI infrastructure plays, including its role in the $500 billion Stargate project with OpenAI and Oracle. The group is also reportedly planning to create and list a Standalone AI and robotics company in the U.S. as early as this year, and is in discussions over a large AI data center project in France.

SoftBank founder and CEO Masayoshi Son has described Graphcore as "a company with deep expertise in chip design, which further builds on Arm’s leadership in Semiconductor IP." SoftBank previously acquired a majority stake in Arm, which went public on the Nasdaq in 2023, and acquired Silicon design company Ampere Computing in 2025. In October, Graphcore announced plans to invest up to £1 billion in a new AI campus in Bengaluru, India, and is currently hiring for hundreds of roles across AI, silicon, software, and systems engineering.