Intel announced this morning that it has acquired Israeli Chipmaker Habana for a price in the region of $2 billion. The company has been investing heavily in AI of recent and this follows earlier investments in Nirvana Systems and Movidius.
In July Habana announced its AI training processor which it claims is 4x faster than GPU based processors. The Tel Aviv startup since came on Intel’s radar.
Intel has estimated that the AI market will be worth $24 billion by the year 2024, this year the American tech giant says it expects $3.5 billion in AI-driven profits, a significant 20% increase over the previous year.
“This acquisition advances our AI strategy, which is to provide customers with solutions to fit every performance need – from the intelligent edge to the data centre,” Intel EVP Navin Shenoy said in a release tied to the news. “More specifically, Habana turbo-charges our AI offerings for the data centre with a high-performance training processor family and a standards-based programming environment to address evolving AI workloads.”
For now, Habana will continue to operate as an independent entity keeping its staff and it’s reported that the Chairman of Habana Avigdor Willenz will stay on the board to continue to advise the companies.
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