Google's parent company just made its first-ever investment in an A.I. chip start-up

The venture capital arm of Google-parent company Alphabet is leading a $56 million funding round in SambaNova Systems, a start-up building computer processors and software for artificial intelligence and data analytics. It's the first time Alphabet's venture arm, GV, has invested in an AI hardware company. The move comes as Google CEO Sundar Pichai and other execs frequently insist that Google is an "AI-first" company. Google sells AI services for developers and counts on it to enable special features in its consumer products, while Waymo relies on AI for autonomous driving. Alphabet called out AI in the business overview section of its 2016 and 2017 annual reports.