Graphcore Ltd., the British semiconductor firm whose chips are used to run artificial intelligence programs, has raised $150 million, bringing its valuation to $1.95 billion. The company now has $300 million in cash, which it will use to invest in research and development and global expansion, Bristol, England-based Graphcore said in a statement on Tuesday. After it raised $200 million in 2018, Graphcore was approached by additional investors who wanted to put money into the company, Chief Executive Officer Nigel Toon said in an interview. While the company has no immediate plans for an initial public offering, several of its investors, such as Baillie Gifford, have experience investing in publicly traded technology companies and are the types of shareholders the company would try to target if it were to go public at some point in the future, Toon said. "Having this additional capital on hand allows us to accelerate our investment and allows us to be in a position to support the really large customers who we're building business with," Toon said.

A Bristol start-up building the next generation of microchips for artificial intelligence technology has raised $150m (£116m) from investors including Edinburgh's Baillie Gifford. Graphcore, founded in 2016 by Icera co-founder Nigel Toon, is now valued at almost $2bn having raised $450m from investors. Its new investors include Baillie Gifford, which has more than £200bn of assets under management, Mayfair Equity Partners and M&G Investments. Previous backers include Microsoft, BMW and Silicon Valley venture capital fund Sequoia. Graphcore has developed an intelligence processing unit, a microchip designed for artificial intelligence software.

Inc., doesn't spend much time schmoozing with investors. He takes just a handful of meetings with the fund managers who own Amazon's shares each year. And when he comes to the U.K., there's just one investor he regularly meets with: Baillie Gifford. The 109-year old asset management firm, which manages 159 billion pounds and is based in Edinburgh, Scotland, isn't exactly a household name, even in the U.K. And yet in the past decade, Baillie Gifford has emerged as one of the world's most active technology investors, and one of a tiny number of European investment houses that matter in Silicon Valley and Shenzhen.