BMW i Ventures Announces Strategic Investment In Graphcore

December 18, 2018 by BMW

Mountain View, CA – December 18, 2018… BMW i Ventures has announced a strategic investment in Graphcore, a company developing a new kind of computer processor and software specifically designed for machine intelligence.

Since the company's founding only two years ago, Graphcore has helped innovators create next-generation machine intelligence solutions. Graphcore's Intelligence Processing Unit (IPU) is the first processor to be designed specifically for Machine Intelligence and delivers higher speeds compared to conventional hardware.

'The versatility of Graphcore's IPU – which supports multiple machine learning techniques with high efficiency – is well-suited for a wide variety of applications from intelligent voice assistants to self-driving vehicles,' said Tobias Jahn, Principal at

BMW i Ventures. 'With the flexibility to use the same processor in both a data center and a vehicle, Graphcore's IPU also presents the possibility of reductions in development times and complexity.'

The investment from BMW i Ventures is a further step towards fulfilling the company's ambition to build a global technology company, focused on this new and fast-growing machine intelligence market.

About BMW i Ventures

BMW i Ventures, BMW's EUR 500 million venture capital fund, invests money and resources in startups in the fields of autonomous driving, digital car and automotive cloud, e-mobility, artificial Intelligence and data, industry 4.0, shared and on-demand mobility, customer digital life, and energy services. The firm has already partnered with innovative companies such as Carbon3D, Chargepoint, Claroty, DesktopMetal, fair, Graphcore, Lime, Mapillary, Moovit, Nauto, and Xometry. BMW i Ventures invests in all stages from seed to growth companies.

About Graphcore

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Graphcore's Intelligence Processing Unit (IPU) hardware and software lets innovators create next generation machine intelligence solutions. The IPU is the first processor to be designed specifically for Machine Intelligence and delivers between 10x to 100x speed up compared to today's hardware. Graphcore has raised over $300m in funding from leading financial and strategic investors and is headquartered in Bristol UK, with offices in London UK, Oslo Norway, Palo Alto USA and Beijing China.