SoftBank-owned Graphcore, a UK-based chipmaker that competes with the likes of Nvidia, is looking to invest $1.3 billion in India over the next ten years, as it establishes a presence in the country for the first time.
Speaking exclusively with ET, chief executive officer Nigel Toon said that Graphcore will have its first office in Bengaluru. In the first phase, it will hire around 100 people in semiconductor AI engineering roles, and will scale it up to around 500 new roles over the next two years, he added.
Graphcore is also planning to double its headcount in the UK to around 750, over a similar timeframe.
“So, we are really feeding off the ecosystem that we see here in India, in terms of silicon design because Silicon Valley is very expensive as a location. We are obviously used to the UK, which is much lower cost, and I think India matches that,” said Toon, who was part of the trade delegation travelling with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
Graphcore builds smartchips that go into powering data centres used for AI computing. It gets these chips manufactured by TSMC in Taiwan. The company claims that its intelligence processing units (IPUs) are more efficient than the graphics processing units (GPUs) built by Nvidia.
Japanese tech investor SoftBank Group has announced a series of AI compute infrastructure initiatives, including the $500 billion Stargate infrastructure project in partnership with OpenAI and Oracle. Graphcore chips can go into powering such computing infrastructure.
Founded in 2016 in Bristol, UK, Graphcore was acquired by SoftBank in 2024 for an undisclosed amount. Armed with the funding infusion by SoftBank, which is set to reach a billion pounds every year, the chipmaker is scaling up its presence in the UK, and now in India as well. It also has a presence in Poland and the US.
Commenting on the recently concluded India-UK trade deal, Toon pointed out that such government-to-government engagements help bring clarifications around IP ownership and also enable bringing talent to India to train the local employee base.
“We are coming because we see the opportunity with the talent, with Bengaluru as a location to really be able to build a long-term investment here. This is really a commercial investment but given the policy-level conversations, it helps bring people,” Toon said.
Toon sounded extremely bullish on the enormous potential of the Indian AI and engineering talent base.
“So, today, you might say maybe India's a little bit behind but my expectation is India will catch up and so that just creates an opportunity for (companies like) us,” Toon said. “We invest (in creating) the talent for the chip and then around us, the ecosystem builds as well,” he added.
Investments in the booming semiconductor and chip designing industry in India are happening in the context of the country’s renewed push towards local manufacturing and design of chips. While Toon is aware of the manufacturing plants coming up in India, he said that given the cutting-edge technology of Graphcore, only TSMC can manufacture these chips. But, he added, the company will monitor India’s manufacturing capabilities as well for future production.
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Speaking exclusively with ET, chief executive officer Nigel Toon said that Graphcore will have its first office in Bengaluru. In the first phase, it will hire around 100 people in semiconductor AI engineering roles, and will scale it up to around 500 new roles over the next two years, he added.
Graphcore is also planning to double its headcount in the UK to around 750, over a similar timeframe.
“So, we are really feeding off the ecosystem that we see here in India, in terms of silicon design because Silicon Valley is very expensive as a location. We are obviously used to the UK, which is much lower cost, and I think India matches that,” said Toon, who was part of the trade delegation travelling with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
Graphcore builds smartchips that go into powering data centres used for AI computing. It gets these chips manufactured by TSMC in Taiwan. The company claims that its intelligence processing units (IPUs) are more efficient than the graphics processing units (GPUs) built by Nvidia.
Japanese tech investor SoftBank Group has announced a series of AI compute infrastructure initiatives, including the $500 billion Stargate infrastructure project in partnership with OpenAI and Oracle. Graphcore chips can go into powering such computing infrastructure.
Founded in 2016 in Bristol, UK, Graphcore was acquired by SoftBank in 2024 for an undisclosed amount. Armed with the funding infusion by SoftBank, which is set to reach a billion pounds every year, the chipmaker is scaling up its presence in the UK, and now in India as well. It also has a presence in Poland and the US.
Commenting on the recently concluded India-UK trade deal, Toon pointed out that such government-to-government engagements help bring clarifications around IP ownership and also enable bringing talent to India to train the local employee base.
“We are coming because we see the opportunity with the talent, with Bengaluru as a location to really be able to build a long-term investment here. This is really a commercial investment but given the policy-level conversations, it helps bring people,” Toon said.
Toon sounded extremely bullish on the enormous potential of the Indian AI and engineering talent base.
“So, today, you might say maybe India's a little bit behind but my expectation is India will catch up and so that just creates an opportunity for (companies like) us,” Toon said. “We invest (in creating) the talent for the chip and then around us, the ecosystem builds as well,” he added.
Investments in the booming semiconductor and chip designing industry in India are happening in the context of the country’s renewed push towards local manufacturing and design of chips. While Toon is aware of the manufacturing plants coming up in India, he said that given the cutting-edge technology of Graphcore, only TSMC can manufacture these chips. But, he added, the company will monitor India’s manufacturing capabilities as well for future production.
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