Facebook's giving away servers for AI: So what does it get in return?

Facebook is distributing 22 high-powered GPU servers to 15 research groups across nine European countries. Just east of the Belgium capital, Brussels, Marian Verhelst's microchip research group at the University of Leuven anxiously awaits a large shipment of supercomputing servers from Facebook's Silicon Valley headquarters. Verhelst, an assistant professor of electrical engineering at the university known as KU Leuven, plans to employ the deep-learning potential of these computers to help develop more advanced processors. As part of a global research partnership to stimulate artificial-intelligence research into deep learning, Facebook is donating 22 GPU-accelerated computer servers to researchers in nine countries across Europe. Facebook has already donated four additional GPU servers to TU Berlin.