Intel Cash, the investment decision and enterprise capital arm of software program giant Intel, invested $132 million in 11 startups in the AI, automation and chip design sector.
Intel Cash has invested almost $13 billion in a lot more than 1,550 firms since its founding in 1991. The new spherical of startup investments, revealed May well 12, highlight Intel’s continued endeavours to ramp up its own AI goods as it competes with other key chip and AI components and software program gamers this kind of as Nvidia and AMD.
The most up-to-date crop of distributors Intel is investing in are: Anodot, Astera Labs, Axonne, Hypersonix, KFBIO, Lilt, MemVerge, ProPlus Electronics, Retrace, Spectrum Materials and Xsight Labs.
For Intel, which sells components to electrical power AI units, investing in AI startups will make feeling and builds synergy with its own business enterprise.
“The efficacy of AI usually is dependent on solid processing capabilities,” said Alan Pelz-Sharpe, founder of sector advisory and study organization Deep Analysis. “So, at a single degree Intel is invested heavily in supporting existing ways to AI.”
Intel has very long offered chips to electrical power AI workloads, and above the last several a long time has invested heavily in AI components study and improvement. Last year, the Mountain See, Calif., vendor acquired Habana Labs, an Israel-centered startup specializing in deep understanding accelerators, for $2 billion to diversify its AI portfolio.
Enterprise funding will increase
The acquisition created on Intel’s 2016 invest in of AI organization Nervana Methods, which enabled Intel to deliver the Nervana NNP processors, a line of chips exclusively made for inferencing and schooling device understanding styles. Intel discontinued the line this year in favor of making out chips centered on Habana’s technological innovation.
“We are relocating absent from generic AI capabilities to very specialized, micro-implementations of AI that can be embedded and operate at chip-degree,” Pelz-Sharpe said. Intel, he said, will possible go on to embed a lot more AI in its goods above time.
Investing in startups
The 11 startups Intel Cash in which not long ago chose to make investments possible not only reward from the millions of dollars of funding but also from Intel’s deep knowledge in complicated processing, Pelz-Sharpe observed.
Intel investing in an AI startup is a huge endorsement of the startup alone. Alan Pelz-SharpeFounder, Deep Analysis
“For some of these startups that could direct to staying acquired by Intel in the future, but both way, Intel investing in an AI startup is a huge endorsement of the startup alone, so it’s not an trader that any one would want to turn absent,” he additional.
Last year, Intel Cash invested $466 million across 36 new investments and 35 comply with-on investments.
Other technological innovation giants, including Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook and Alphabet, also make investments heavily in startups in the AI sector, and have commonly acquired AI startups above the last several a long time.
Funding for AI startups has skyrocketed above the earlier decade, with world wide non-public investments in AI startups acquiring attained $37 billion in 2019, in accordance to a report by Human-Centered Synthetic Intelligence initiative at Stanford University.
