Graphcore vs Modular AI

By valuation, Modular AI is the larger company at $1.6B versus $500M — a 3.2x difference. Size can also be measured by team: Graphcore employs 500-1000 people while Modular AI has 150 employees.

Graphcore has raised more in total funding at $700M, compared to Modular AI's $380M — a gap of $320M. Combined, the two companies have completed 7 known funding rounds.

Graphcore leads with an Awaira Score of 85/100, while Modular AI sits at 76/100. That 9-point gap reflects real differences in funding, scale, and traction — it's not a vanity metric.

Graphcore was founded by Nigel Toon in 2016. Modular AI was founded by Chris Lattner in 2022. Visit each company's profile on Awaira for a full founder biography.

Graphcore: Graphcore designs the Intelligence Processing Unit, a processor architecture built specifically for machine learning workloads, offering a hardware alternative to NVIDIA GPUs for AI model training and inference. The Bristol-based company developed the IPU around a bulk synchronous parallel computation model that distributes model parameters across thousands of processor cores with local memory, achieving high efficiency for sparse and irregular neural network computations that GPUs handle inefficiently.\n\nThe company raised approximately $700 million across six funding rounds including a Series E that valued it at approximately $2.8 billion, with investors including Sequoia Capital, Microsoft, and Samsung Ventures. Graphcore processors are deployed in research institutions including Oxford, Cambridge, and the Rosalind Franklin Institute, as well as commercial AI platforms. The company has shipped multiple IPU generations including the MK2 IPU and Bow IPU, with the Colossus processor and IPU-POD system providing data centre scale AI compute.\n\nGraphcore competes directly against NVIDIA in the AI accelerator market, alongside AMD, Intel Gaudi, and other AI chip startups including Cerebras, SambaNova, and Groq. The AI accelerator market is projected to exceed $100 billion by 2027, driven by demand for model training compute. Graphcore faces the dominant position of NVIDIA and its CUDA software ecosystem as the primary barrier to adoption, requiring significant software investment to match the maturity of CUDA tooling that researchers and engineers have relied on for over a decade. Modular AI: Modular AI, founded in 2022 and valued at $1.6 billion, develops infrastructure software for AI systems. The company has raised $380 million in Series C funding. Modular AI's core focus is building compiler and runtime technologies that optimize AI model execution across diverse hardware platforms. The company's primary product is Mojo, a programming language designed to bridge the gap between research and production AI systems, enabling developers to write performant code without switching between multiple languages. Mojo combines Python's accessibility with systems programming capabilities, targeting the inefficiencies in traditional AI development workflows. The platform addresses a critical pain point in AI infrastructure: the fragmentation between high-level ML frameworks and low-level optimization requirements. Modular AI positions itself within the growing AI infrastructure layer, competing alongside companies focused on model optimization, deployment, and hardware abstraction. The company operates in a competitive landscape that includes established players in compiler technology and emerging AI infrastructure vendors. Modular AI's approach emphasizes developer productivity and hardware portability, allowing AI engineers to optimize code for various accelerators and processors. The company's growth trajectory reflects broader demand for specialized infrastructure solutions as enterprise AI adoption accelerates. Specific customer deployments are not widely disclosed, though the company targets enterprises seeking deployment flexibility and performance optimization. Modular AI develops Mojo, a systems programming language designed to unify AI research and production workflows by eliminating language switching friction.

Graphcore got there first, launching in 2016 — that's 6 years of extra runway. Modular AI didn't arrive until 2022. In AI, that kind of head start means more training data, deeper customer relationships, and a bigger talent moat.

Graphcore has about 500-1000 employees; Modular AI has about 150. A bigger team usually means more revenue or heavier VC backing, but in AI, small teams can build at massive scale.

Yes — they're direct rivals. Both Graphcore and Modular AI compete in AI Infrastructure, targeting many of the same buyers. If you're evaluating one, you should be looking at the other.