Graphcore's execs on machine learning, company building

Toon said that Graphcore currently stands at 40 employees and that the $30 million raised in the recently announced Series A (see Graphcore gets big backing for machine learning) would be used to complete the first design and for some limited expansion. "We could have taken more but this is sufficient to get product out," said Toon. "We will keep the engineering based here in Bristol but there is scope for some customer support and business development roles in Silicon Valley, Seattle and China," he added. Toon acknowledged that there is one other major technology company, besides Samsung and Robert Bosch, that contributed to the Series A funding . He said that company has chosen not to go public on the investment. With regard to the Intelligent Processor Unit (IPU) Knowles commented: "We will release our technology in the second half of 2017. It is a brand new, from-scratch design."