A computer chip start-up designing hardware for artificial intelligence (AI) applications has raised $30 million to help it take on giants like Intel and Nvidia.

U.K.-based Graphcore is aiming to ship its chips next year to be used in applications from driverless cars to cloud computing, processes that will require machine-learning technology. This involves large amounts of data being used to teach AI systems.

Graphcore said its processors will be up to 100 times better than current solutions in the market when it comes to how quickly the AI can learn, as well as the amount of energy consumed.

Currently, Graphic Processing Units (GPUs) are used to run machine-learning applications. But Nigel Toon, the chief executive of Graphcore said these are not suitable for the future.

"GPUs have been built to run programs that completely describe the algorithm. Machine learning is different. You are trying to teach the system using data and that requires a different style of compute," Toon told CNBC in a phone interview on Monday.