According to news on January 4, Intel announced on Wednesday local time in the United States that with the support of digital asset management company Digital Bridge Group and other investors, the company will form a new independent company around the artificial intelligence (AI) software business. Intel executives would not disclose the value of the deal or comment on whether the company would retain a majority stake in the new venture, saying only that the company would have an independent board of directors and Intel would remain a shareholder.
The new entity, which will not be publicly traded and will be called Articul8AI, was originally the product of Intel's enterprise artificial intelligence technology project in partnership with the Boston Consulting Group.
Intel used its own supercomputers to develop a generative artificial intelligence system that can read text and images using a combination of open source and internally developed technologies. Intel later made improvements to the system, running it in Boston Consulting Group's data centers to help address privacy and security concerns.
Arun Subramaniyan, formerly vice president and general manager of Intel's Data Center and Artificial Intelligence Group, will become CEO of Articul8AI. Subramanian said many potential customers have expressed similar reservations about handing over their data to large cloud computing companies for AI work.
He also said potential customers are concerned that if thousands of their employees start using the systems, costs will spiral out of control.
"We've been trying to solve the biggest challenge in generative AI today, which is that it's easy to build a proof of concept, but getting the product into production and doing it in a safe, cost-sustainable way, that's really missing," Subramanian said in an interview.
Intel said Articul8AI will provide full-stack generative artificial intelligence platform support to securely store customer data, training and inference in the enterprise cloud, on-premises or hybrid deployment. This will allow customers to choose how, where and when to set up their environment.
"Our collaboration began nearly two years ago when the joint venture was in Intel's incubation phase," said Rich Lesser, global chairman of The Boston Consulting Group. "Since then, we have deployed Articul8AI products for multiple customers looking for a production-ready platform that can be quickly brought to market."
The team is also leveraging what it learned during this period to scale the platform to enterprise performance levels to support specialized knowledge bases that require high levels of security, such as financial services, aerospace, semiconductors, and telecommunications.
Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger said: "With its deep domain knowledge in artificial intelligence and high-performance computing and enterprise-grade generative artificial intelligence deployment, Articul8AI will drive tangible business results for Intel and our broader customer and partner ecosystem. We look forward to continued cooperation with Articul8AI as Intel accelerates the development of artificial intelligence around the world."
Intel's creation of Articul8AI is its latest move to seek outside capital for its business units.
It was previously reported that Intel plans to spin off its programmable chip division into an independent business unit, the Programmable Solutions Group, and intends to conduct an initial public offering (IPO) within two to three years. Mobileye Global, an autonomous vehicle technology company owned by Intel, has been listed in October 2022 with a market value of US$17 billion.