Intel snaps up Nervana for a crash course on deep learning

Intel is buying deep-learning startup Nervana Systems in a deal that could help it make up for lost ground in the increasingly hot area of artificial intelligence. Founded in 2014, California-based Nervana offers a hosted platform for deep learning that's optimized "from algorithms down to silicon" to solve machine-learning problems, the startup says. Businesses can use its Nervana cloud service to build and deploy applications that make use of deep learning, a branch of AI used for tasks like image recognition and uncovering patterns in large amounts of data. Also of interest to Intel, Nervana is developing a specialty processor, known as an ASIC, that's custom built for deep learning. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but one estimate put the value above $350 million.