Intel the multinational tech company is set to create the next best shift inside the corporate world by purchasing Nervana Systems. Nervana Systems is the one which gained much popularity as a deep learning and artificial learning start up. The billing amount of this purchase is not being clearly disclosed but the techies with some knowledge of this deal are assuming the price to be around $408 million. Now that’s a great deal of money but if we rethink, what investment is expensive for the chip giant Intel.
Nervana Systems which is still a start up with only 48 people involved must have been of great worth to Intel because 408 million dollars is a lot. Whereas, some experts are suggesting the start up to have some sort of direct appeal to world’s best chipmaker and assuming this to be the reason behind the deal.
Vice president of Intel, Jason Waxman told the media channels that, “The shift to artificial intelligence could dwarf the move to cloud computing. Machine learning is needed as we move from a world in which people control a couple of devices that connect to the Internet to one in which billions of devices are connecting and talking to one another.
There is far more data being given off by these machines than people can possibly sift through.”
Naveen Rao, managing director of Nervana Systems says, “Our start up had raised $25 million in venture funding and also has a contract to work with In-Q-tel, the U.S. intelligence community’s venture arm. But that deal didn’t reflect any hurdles in getting more capital to stay independent.
So raising money was not the problem. Surprisingly it ended up being relatively easy. By selling to Intel, we have access to technology we’d never dream about.”
Waxman added saying, “There’s always a next wave. Noting that corporate computing has already gone from mainframes to client-server and now on to cloud computing, I firmly believe this is not only the next wave but something that will dwarf the last wave.
I very well know that people’s eyes start to roll whenever big companies talk about catching the next wave. I even admit that the hype got a little strong with artificial intelligence and deep learning, but the reality has started to surpass the hype.
This is a real thing at Baidu; this is a real thing at Google. They are using deep learning techniques. It is not just papers anymore.”
Steve Jurvetson, who also invested in Nervana Systems some time back, complimented the start up saying, “This is a group that’s not been walking the usual path. I think it’s the biggest advance since the scientific method itself.”
