{"id":666465,"date":"2026-05-12T17:42:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T17:42:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/666465\/"},"modified":"2026-05-12T17:42:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T17:42:13","slug":"softbank-invests-457m-in-graphcore-ai-chips","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/666465\/","title":{"rendered":"SoftBank invests $457M in Graphcore AI chips"},"content":{"rendered":"

Softbank<\/a> has injected more than $450 million into a chip company, CNBC has learned, as the Japanese investment giant looks to continue its major play in AI infrastructure and hardware.<\/p>\n

Graphcore, which is developing AI chips and systems and was acquired by the Japanese giant in 2024, issued a single share at the value of $457 million on April 10, according to a Companies House filing. A Graphcore spokesperson confirmed to CNBC that the money was funding from SoftBank. SoftBank has been approached for comment.<\/p>\n

At the time of the acquisition, SoftBank said U.K.-based Graphcore would collaborate with the company on developing artificial general intelligence (AGI) \u2014 when AI matches or surpasses human intelligence.<\/p>\n

The fresh funds would be a “portion” of the money Graphcore is expecting from SoftBank this year, a person familiar with arrangements between the companies told CNBC, who asked to remain anonymous as they were not authorized to discuss private details.<\/p>\n

AI has been a huge area of investment for SoftBank in recent years, as it funneled tens of billions of dollars into the sector, including a big stake in OpenAI<\/a> and infrastructure commitments. <\/p>\n

Once touted as a rival to Nvidia<\/a>, Graphcore raised hundreds of millions<\/a> of dollars but struggled to gain commercial traction before it was acquired by SoftBank.<\/p>\n

Since SoftBank acquired Graphcore, it has announced several AI infrastructure investments, including its involvement in the $500 billion Stargate project, in partnership with OpenAI and Oracle. <\/p>\n

\"SoftBank<\/p>\n

SoftBank is planning to create and list a standalone AI and robotics company in the U.S. as early as this year, the Financial Times reported<\/a> in April. The company is also discussing a large French AI data center project in France, Bloomberg reported<\/a> on Monday.<\/p>\n

Masayoshi Son, SoftBank founder and CEO, previously described<\/a> Graphcore as “a company with deep expertise in chip design, which further builds on Arm’s leadership in semiconductor IP.”<\/p>\n

In 2016, SoftBank also acquired a majority stake in Arm<\/a>, which then listed on the Nasdaq in 2023. SoftBank also acquired silicon design company Ampere Computing in 2025.<\/p>\n

In October, Graphcore announced it would invest up to \u00a31 billion into opening a new AI campus in Bengaluru, India. It’s hiring for hundreds of roles across AI, silicon, software and systems engineering, according to its website.<\/p>\n

Choose CNBC as your preferred source on Google and never miss a moment from the most trusted name in business news.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Softbank has injected more than $450 million into a chip company, CNBC has learned, as the Japanese investment…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":666466,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,9075,254,255,64,63,4065,174,5063,38110,48037,105],"class_list":["post-666465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-arm-holdings-plc","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-breaking-news-technology","tag-business-news","tag-nvidia-corp","tag-oracle-corp","tag-softbank-group-corp","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=666465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666465\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/666466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=666465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=666465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=666465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}