Intel to acquire deep-learning firm Nervana Systems for $400 million

Intel will be acquiring deep-learning startup Nervana Systems in its bid to be ready for the onslaught of artificial intelligence inside corporate data centres. According to sources who have spoken to Recode, the deal is valued at around $408 million. Nervana Systems was founded in 2014 and is headquartered in San Diego, California. It is led by former Qualcomm researcher Naveen Rao and it has raised around $25 mn in venture funding. Nervana had open-sourced its Neon deep learning software last year. The company will join Intel’s Data Centre Group after the deal is closed. Intel vice president Jason Waxman claims that the shift to artificial intelligence will be far greater than the move to cloud computing. According to him, machine learning is of significance as we are moving from a world where people control a couple of devices connected to the internet, to one where billions of devices are connected online and are talking to each other. Unlike others who have been making intelligent software to run on top of a cluster of graphics chips, Nervana Systems has been working to bring machine learning at the chip level. It has a fully optimised software and hardware stack for deep-learning. Rao is excited to be part of Intel as it gives him access to cutting edge technology. Intel chips are used in most data centres and it is a clear leader in that space. In the artificial intelligence space Intel competes with the likes of Nvidia which provides high performance computing solutions when it comes to creating chips for deep learning which involves training artificial neural networks on lots of data and then getting them to make inferences on this data. Google has its tensor processing units (TPUs) which it uses for its deep learning projects. “We will apply Nervana’s software expertise to further optimize the Intel Math Kernel Library and its integration into industry standard frameworks. Nervana’s Engine and silicon expertise will advance Intel’s AI portfolio and enhance the deep learning performance and TCO of our Intel Xeon and Intel Xeon Phi processors,” said Diane Bryant, EVP and GM of the Data Centre Group at Intel on her  blog.