SoftBank-owned Graphcore has announced plans to invest up to $1 billion in India over the next decade.

In addition to the funding announcement, the company said it has opened a new AI engineering campus in Bengaluru, southern India, creating 500 new semiconductor jobs in the region, including roles in silicon logical design, physical design, verification, characterization, and bring-up.

In a statement, Graphcore said the AI engineering campus will play a “central role” in allowing the company to build the future of AI computing, “helping to realize SoftBank Group’s vision of becoming the leading Artificial Super Intelligence platform provider.”

Since 2015, SoftBank has invested more than $12bn in India, the company said, adding that “Graphcore’s engineers in Bengaluru will be developing semiconductor products for use by the world’s leading AI practitioners – to help solve global challenges in drug discovery and public health, environmental sustainability, and to improve business productivity.”

Outside of India, the chip designer also announced that in the “next couple of years,” it would be doubling its headcount in the UK to around 750 people, mostly in silicon engineering, software, and AI engineering roles.

Founded in Bristol in 2016, Graphcore makes AI accelerators called Intelligent Processing Units (IPUs), which have been marketed as an alternative to GPUs produced by Nvidia.

However, in October 2023, it was revealed that the company had been struggling with serious financial difficulties, with financial statements disclosing that the company had made pre-tax losses of £161 million ($204m) in 2022, with revenue dropping 46 percent to £2.1m ($2.7m), approximately one percent of the losses it posted.

SoftBank went on to acquire the chip designer in 2024 for an undisclosed amount.