Intel acquires deep learning startup Nervana for more than 350 million

Chipmaker Intel today announced that it has acquired Nervana, a startup that has been developing artificial intelligence software and hardware. Terms of the deal weren't disclosed, but a source familiar with the matter told VentureBeat Intel paid more than 350 million. "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," Diane Bryant, executive vice president and general manager of Intel's Data Center Group, said in a blog post. While Intel has a running business in high-performance computing (HPC), it has taken a back seat to Nvidia, another HPC supplier, when it comes to creating chips for deep learning, a trendy type of artificial intelligence that involves training artificial neural networks on lots of data and then getting them to make inferences on new data. Google has deployed competing chips named tensor processing units (TPUs) that can handle Google's TensorFlow open source deep learning framework.