Asia Tech Wire (July 12) -- Japan's SoftBank Group has acquired British artificial intelligence chipmaker Graphcore, according to Reuters.

Graphcore was once seen as a competitor to U.S. tech giant Nvidia.

As of the end of 2020, Graphcore was valued at $2.77 billion.

A document released last year showed that Graphcore needed more cash to break even.

The company previously cut its workforce by a fifth and closed operations in Norway, Japan and South Korea.

Founded in 2016, Graphcore is a startup that develops accelerators for AI and machine learning.