| Graphcore AI development lab, Bristol (SoftBank)Data centres and compute sites | Graphcore and SoftBank announced a new AI development lab in Bristol, doubling their headcount to 750 jobs. announcedProfile- Owner or parent
- Graphcore, a wholly owned subsidiary of SoftBank Group Corp (acquired 11 Jul 2024)
- Founded or opened
- the lab was announced on 20 Nov 2025. Graphcore was co-founded in 2016 by Nigel Toon and Simon Knowles.
- Lab director or lead
- Marcus McElroy — General Manager, "at the helm" — from 31 Jul 2026
- Other leaders
- executive team Nick Bishop; Helen Byrne; Sally Doherty; Tim Ramsdale; Rami Sinno; John Walsh (titles not given) — Jul 2026; Nigel Toon — co-founder, stepped down as Executive Chair on 31 Jul 2026
- Site and address as published
- headquarters in Bristol, moving into "a purpose built global headquarters in Bristol, UK" in Sep 2026; offices in Cambridge, London, Gdansk and Hsinchu (Jul 2024)
- Headcount
- lab "expected to double headcount to 750 jobs" — 20 Nov 2025 — GOV.UK (single source); company "approaching 1,000 employees" — 31 Jul 2026 — graphcore.ai; 75 new jobs, a 20% rise — 7 Nov 2024 — graphcore.ai
- What it does
- Graphcore is a Bristol company that builds silicon, hardware and software for AI compute, owned by SoftBank since 2024. In November 2025 the UK government said Graphcore and SoftBank would open a new AI development lab in Bristol, doubling headcount there to 750. In July 2026 Graphcore said it was approaching 1,000 staff and moving to a new Bristol headquarters.
- Research groups or focus
- "silicon design, hardware, datacenter infrastructure, software, and AI research" (hiring areas, Nov 2024)
- Notable outputs
- no new outputs found; earlier chips are already on the site (GC1, GC200, Bow IPU, BowPod 1024, IPU-M2000)
- Funding or budget as published
- Not stated (no acquisition price or lab budget published on pages opened)
- Partners named
- SoftBank Group — owner — Jul 2024; SoftBank Investment Advisers (Vikas J. Parekh, Managing Partner) — quoted — Jul 2024
- Uk government links
- GOV.UK announcement of 20 Nov 2025 ("Graphcore and SoftBank renew their backing for the UK")
- Status now
- Active: Marcus McElroy has led the company since Nigel Toon stepped down on 31 Jul 2026, and Graphcore said it would move into a new Bristol headquarters in Sep 2026.
Labs Round 8 deep profile (31 Oct 2026), as the researchers wrote it; confidence: one source (lab and 750 jobs: GOV.UK only); company facts verified across Graphcore pages. Sources - gov.uk/government/news/ai-to-power-national-rene
- graphcore.ai/posts/graphcore-co-founder-and-exec
- graphcore.ai/posts/graphcore-joins-softbank-grou
- graphcore.ai/about
- graphcore.ai/posts/graphcore-begins-hiring-drive
| Bristol (—) | gov.uk/government/news/ai-to-power-national-rene · graphcore.ai/posts/graphcore-co-founder-and-exec · graphcore.ai/posts/graphcore-joins-softbank-grou · graphcore.ai/about | one source |
| Isambard-AI build (HPE and NVIDIA for the University of Bristol)Partnerships and contracts | HPE built Isambard-AI with NVIDIA chips for the government's AI Research Resource; operated by the University of Bristol at the National Composites Centre. | National Composites Centre, Bristol (—) | gov.uk/government/publications/ai-research-resou · gov.uk/government/news/technology-secretary-anno | verified |
| NVIDIA AI lab, BristolData centres and compute sites | NVIDIA's AI research lab in Bristol; in June 2025 the government said it would expand to other parts of the UK. operating; expansion announcedProfile- Owner or parent
- NVIDIA
- Founded or opened
- Not stated (an existing lab by June 2025)
- Site and address as published
- Bristol (no address)
- What it does
- An NVIDIA AI lab in Bristol. In June 2025 NVIDIA told the UK government it would expand the lab to other parts of the UK to speed up UK AI research. None of the NVIDIA pages I opened describe the lab's own work. NVIDIA's UK research links include the Isambard-AI supercomputer at the University of Bristol, the UK-LLM project with UCL and Bangor University, and compute for UK agentic-safety labs.
- Research groups or focus
- "to accelerate UK research in AI" (GOV.UK, Jun 2025)
- Notable outputs (UK-wide, not credited to the Bristol lab)
- UK-LLM — Welsh and English model with UCL and Bangor University, built on NVIDIA Nemotron — Sep 2025; electrostatics-aware foundation models with University of Cambridge researchers, using cuEquivariance — Sep 2025 (Nemotron-Personas-UK-Extended is already BIZ-LAB-7098)
- Funding or budget as published
- Not stated for the lab. NVIDIA committed $250m in compute donations over five years ($50m a year) to UK agentic safety and security research — 13 Oct 2026 — https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-commits-250-million-to-advance-uk-agentic-safety-and-security-research-over-the-next-five-years
- Partners named
- BOLD Lab (Oxford), SOFAIR Lab (UCL), Imperial College London — compute donation — Oct 2026; University of Bristol — Isambard-AI on Grace Hopper — Jul 2025; Sovereign AI Industry Forum founding members Babcock, BAE Systems, Barclays, BT, National Grid, Standard Chartered — Jun 2025
- Uk government links
- two MoUs with the UK government (Jun 2025): an AI talent pipeline, and university research on AI in advanced connectivity; DSIT update (10 Jun 2026): JOINER terminals in Leeds, Bristol and Edinburgh awarded NVIDIA GPU platforms
- Status now
- No page opened gives a 2026 update on the Bristol lab itself; NVIDIA's wider UK research activity continued with the October 2026 compute commitment.
Labs Round 8 deep profile (31 Oct 2026), as the researchers wrote it; confidence: one source (the lab itself is named only by GOV.UK). Sources - gov.uk/government/news/pm-launches-national-skil
- nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-commits-250-mi
- blogs.nvidia.com/blog/uk-partner-ecosystem-ai-ma
- blogs.nvidia.com/blog/uk-ai-vision/
| Bristol (—) | gov.uk/government/news/pm-launches-national-skil · nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-commits-250-mi · blogs.nvidia.com/blog/uk-partner-ecosystem-ai-ma · blogs.nvidia.com/blog/uk-ai-vision/ | one source |