December.19.2018
Orrick has advised leading AI chipmaker Graphcore in its $200 million Series D funding round, bringing its post-money valuation to $1.7 billion. The latest company in Europe to achieve “unicorn” status (a valuation over $1 billion), UK-based Graphcore has built a completely new kind of processor and software for AI and machine intelligence.
The round was led by existing investor Atomico and new investor Sofina. BMW iVentures, Microsoft and Merian Global Investors also joined the round as new investors.
The funding was also supported with follow on investments from existing investors, including Amadeus Capital Partners, Robert Bosch Venture Capital, C4 Ventures, Dell Technologies Capital, Draper Esprit, Foundation Capital, Pitango and Sequoia Capital. To date, Graphcore has raised over $300 million since launching in 2016.
In addition to Graphcore, Orrick has helped five other clients achieve unicorn status this year, including Asana, Convoy, HashiCorp, PagerDuty and Revolut.
Orrick has advised Graphcore since its inception by way of a spin-out from XMOS, another Orrick client. The Orrick team included Chris Grew, Jamie Moore, Stephen Tallon, Chris Perry, Alex Sobolev, Jose Campos, Jason Wu, Aoife Casey, Alexandra Ames, Jayshree Patel, Jai Nathwani and Michael Yang.