Nigel Toon - Co-founder & CEO Graphcore

Graphcore is backed by Silicon Valley Venture Capital Sequoia, who have backed Apple, Google, WhatsApp, Youtube, Instagram and Zoom amongst many others.

Nigel Toon founded Graphcore in Bristol, and now is employing 450 people across Beijing, Palo Alto, Oslo and Cambridge.

Highlights of the episode:

Nigel thinks that the impact of Artificial Intelligence is both overblown and underestimated.

How we should think of AI as a tool similar to how the spreadsheet impacted accountancy, far from displacing jobs as many predicted - more people are now working in accountancy than ever before despite the introduction of Excel. 

How the most powerful skill is seeing across boundaries.

How WW2 impacted the development of the jet engine. 

Their plans to hire 200 people in the next year and why Bristol is a brilliant differentiator to attract the best engineers.

We also talk about the plans for Graphcore to float on the stock market. 

Oh if that wasn’t enough we finish on a touch of geo politics and digital nationalism.