Intel, eager to expand into new markets beyond the fading PC sector, said that it has purchased a three-year-old Seattle artificial intelligence startup called Vertex.AI.
It is Intel’s second acquisition and is now part of Intel’s artificial intelligence products group that will continue hiring in Seattle for that segment. On account of this acquisition, Intel has indeed gained an experienced team and (intellectual property) to further enabled flexible deep learning at the edge. Intel also bought a Silicon Valley company known as eASIC in order to complement Intel’s programmable chips segment.
Intel buys Seattle Artificial Intelligence
Intel has also taken-over Vertex.ai, a small startup that has been dedicated to deep learning technologies.
Intel has confirmed the acquisition and has also stated that the seven-person team that includes founders Choong Ng and Jeremy Bruestle thus joining the Movidius team in Intel’s Artificial Intelligence Products Group.
With this acquisition, Intel did gain an experienced team and also IP to further enable flexible deep learning at the edge. Financial details were not at all disclosed.
Founded in 2015, Seattle-based Vertex.ai is a startup which does focus on deep learning technologies, a crucial aspect of artificial intelligence (AI). Deep learning is a facet of AI which does involve the use of algorithms as well as patterns based on the brain’s mechanisms as well as neural networking.
The ethos behind deep learning is to give machines the learning as well as processing capabilities of humans, such as natural data analysis, pattern spotting as well as conversational abilities. Impact of artificial intelligence on podcast
Voice recognition systems do include the Apple Siri voice assistant and Amazon’s Alexa, Facebook’s photo recognition technology, and IBM’s Watson all make use deep learning technologies to process data.
The goal that is being attained is of creating “deep learning for every platform, a deep learning engine rival to Google’s TensorFlow CPU. The software has indeed been created to deploy deep learning solutions across multiple devices as well as platforms.
The project will not be stopped due to the acquisition. Instead, PlaidML will remain indeed available as an open-source project on GitHub and the system will soon be transferred to an Apache 2.0 license.
Intel will have a hand in development though by making use of the technology to create an Intel graph backend system.
One is indeed excited to advance flexible deep learning for edge computing as part of Intel.
Investing
It is not all that clear how much funding the startup has secured in the past. However, it is understood that the company has launched two investment rounds in the past, an early stage VC as well as accelerator round. Creative Destruction Lab and Curious are listed as previous investors.
Intel is also pushing towards increasing its presence in the AI field. The company is interested in hiring more AI developers in the area and the acquisition does build upon the purchase of chipmaker Altera, computer vision firm Movidius, and Nirvana Systems, a creator of AI processors.
It also understood that AI was a crucial ingredient meant to push forward Intel’s vision to become a data-centric company.
Intel’s AI processor business is now worth $1 billion a year, but the firm does aim to hit $10 billion by 2020.
We do believe data defines the future of our industry and the future of Intel.
One can take note of the fact that ninety percent of the world’s data has been created in the last two years, and only 1 percent of it is being analyzed and used for real business value. One is indeed in the golden age of data.
