A $30m injection of cash into the UK’s Bristol-based AI chip startup Graphcore in July this year was another clear indication of how AI chip development is disrupting the traditional CPU players. Earlier in the same month, leading AI chipmaker NVIDIA struck a deal with Chinese web services firm Baidu with a promise to “accelerate AI”, while Microsoft executive vice president for AI research Harry Shum recently talked about how Microsoft is developing its own AI chip for HoloLens. Throw in Google’s TPU, Apple’s hints at an AI chip for its smartphones and a host of startups including Austin, Texas-based Mythic and you have a processor bunfight brewing.