Tractable and Graphcore Team Up to Accelerate the Future of Accident and Disaster Recovery with AI

LONDON and BRISTOL, England, Aug. 11, 2021 — Tractable and Graphcore, two of the UK’s fastest-growing and most innovative technology companies, have come together to accelerate the use of artificial intelligence in accident and disaster recovery.  

Tractable – whose AI technology makes assessing damage to cars and property more accurate and efficient – achieved a 5X performance improvement with its image recognition system by switching from its existing compute platform to Graphcore’s IPU. 

The dramatic acceleration lets Tractable’s engineers more rapidly iterate model training to accommodate different vehicle types and a wider range of policy criteria, as the business adds new users around the world. 

“Tractable’s systems are always learning, based on a wealth of incoming data. That means constant training and re-training of our AI models to provide the best possible service to our customers,” said Razvan Ranca, Co-Founder and CTO of Tractable. 

“The speedup that we get running computer vision training on the Graphcore IPU gives Tractable a significant competitive advantage. Tasks that might previously have taken a week, can now be done in a day, allowing us to scale faster, while maintaining a high level of accuracy.”  

Tractable’s technology powers accelerated damage assessments for more than 20 of the world’s leading insurance companies. Part of its remarkable success is down to its use of state-of-the-art computer vision models, which have been shown to perform significantly better on the Graphcore IPU than other types of processor, thanks to its AI-optimised architecture. 

“Graphcore’s IPU systems are ideally suited to Tractable’s needs,” said Tom Wilson, VP Product Management at Graphcore. 

“The performance and efficiency that the IPU is able to deliver on today’s most demanding workloads will help Tractable meet the compute needs of its rapidly growing customer base. At the same time, Graphcore’s future-focused architecture will help Tractable develop new AI models and techniques, maintaining its lead in applying AI to understand damage to property and vehicles.” 

Tractable worked with cloud compute provider iomart and Graphcore Elite Partner Boston Limited to install its IPU-POD system. 

Graphcore and Tractable have received global recognition in recent years for the leading roles they play in their respective industries. Both feature in CB Insights’ AI100 2021 global ranking of companies innovating in artificial intelligence. 

About Graphcore 

Graphcore is the inventor of the Intelligence Processing Unit (IPU), a sophisticated microprocessor, specifically designed for the needs of current and next-generation artificial intelligence workloads.   

Graphcore’s IPU-POD datacenter systems, for scale up and scale out AI compute, offer the ability to run large models across multiple IPUs, or to share the compute resource between different users and workloads. 

Since its founding in 2016, Graphcore has raised more than $730 million in funding.   

Investors include: Sequoia Capital, Microsoft, Dell, Samsung, BMW iVentures, Robert Bosch Venture Capital, as well as leading AI innovators including Demis Hassabis (Deepmind), Pieter Abbeel (UC Berkeley), and Zoubin Ghahramani (Google Brain). 

More information can be found at graphcore.ai 

About Tractable 

Tractable develops artificial intelligence systems for accident and disaster recovery. Its AI solutions process over $2B a year in vehicle repairs and purchases, and have been deployed by over 20 of the global top 100 insurers across Europe, North America and Asia, helping millions of households recover from accidents faster. 

Source: Tractable and Graphcore