Draper Esprit in $200m series-D for Graphcore

The round valued the business at $1.7bn and included commitments from strategic investors, Microsoft and BMW.

As a result of this valuation, the fair value of Draper Esprit's investment in Graphcore has increased its NAV per share by approximately 29 pence.

Graphcore has tripled the size of its team during 2018, according to a press release. The company employed 54 people in 2017, according to its accounts. It has generated its first revenues this year, just two years after the company was founded and after recording a loss of £20m in 2017.

Previous funding
A consortium of VC firms and strategic investors led a $30m series-A for Graphcore in 2016. Amadeus Capital Partners, C4 Ventures, Draper Esprit, Foundation Capital and Pitango Venture Capital all took part.

Atomico joined the syndicate in 2017, leading all of the series-A investors in a $30m series-B; Sequoia entered the capital structure later that year, backing a $50m series-C.

Company
Founded in 2016, Graphcore is a hardware systems company that develops technologies for machine learning and AI applications. Its IPU (intelligence processing unit) chips are the first to be designed specifically for machine learning and AI technologies. It employs approximately 150 people.

People
Draper Esprit – Simon Cook (CEO).
Graphcore – Nigel Toon (CEO).

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