- Intel announced it is buying Israel-based Habana Labs for about $2 billion. These are the details about the deal.
Today Intel announced that it is buying Israel-based Habana Labs for about $2 billion. Habana Labs is the developer of programmable deep learning accelerators for the data center. With Habana’s technology, it will strengthen Intel’s artificial intelligence (AI) portfolio and accelerates its efforts in the fast-growing AI silicon market — which Intel expects to be greater than $25 billion by 2024.
“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 center,” said Navin Shenoy, executive vice president and general manager of the Data Platforms Group at Intel. “More specifically, Habana turbo-charges our AI offerings for the data center with a high-performance training processor family and a standards-based programming environment to address evolving AI workloads.”
Intel’s artificial intelligence strategy is grounded in the belief that harnessing the power of artificial intelligence to improve business outcomes requires a broad mix of hardware and software along with full ecosystem support. And today, Intel’s artificial intelligence solutions are helping customers turn data into business value and driving meaningful revenue for the company.
This year, Intel expects to generate over $3.5 billion in AI-driven revenue — up over than 20% year-over-year. And together, Intel and Habana plan to accelerate the delivery of best-in-class artificial intelligence products for the data center thus addressing customers’ evolving needs.
“We know that customers are looking for ease of programmability with purpose-built AI solutions, as well as superior, scalable performance on a wide variety of workloads and neural network topologies. That’s why we’re thrilled to have an AI team of Habana’s caliber with a proven track record of execution joining Intel. Our combined IP and expertise will deliver unmatched computing performance and efficiency for AI workloads in the data center,” Shenoy added.
Going forward, Habana will remain an independent business unit and will continue to be led by its current management team. And Habana will report to Intel’s Data Platforms Group, which is the home to Intel’s broad portfolio of data center class AI technologies.
This combination is also going to give Habana access to Intel’s AI capabilities, including significant resources built over the last three years with deep expertise in AI software, algorithms, and research that will help Habana scale and accelerate.
Habana chairman Avigdor Willenz agreed to serve as a senior adviser to the business unit as well as to Intel. And Habana will continue to be based in Israel where Intel also has a significant presence and long history of investment. Intel Capital was an investor in Habana prior to the acquisition.
“We have been fortunate to get to know and collaborate with Intel given its investment in Habana, and we’re thrilled to be officially joining the team,” explained David Dahan, CEO of Habana. “Intel has created a world-class AI team and capability. We are excited to partner with Intel to accelerate and scale our business. Together, we will deliver our customers more AI innovation, faster.”
Currently, Habana’s Gaudi AI Training Processor is sampling with select hyperscale customers. And large-node training systems based on Gaudi are expected to deliver up to a 4x increase in throughput versus systems built with the equivalent number of GPUs. Plus Gaudi is designed for efficient and flexible system scale-up and scale-out.
And Habana’s Goya AI Inference Processor — which is commercially available — has demonstrated excellent inference performance including throughput and real-time latency in a highly competitive power envelope. Gaudi for training and Goya for inference offer an easy-to-program development environment to help customers deploy and differentiate their solutions as AI workloads continue to evolve with growing demands on compute, memory, and connectivity.
Earlier this month, Intel CEO Bob Swan spoke at a Credit Suisse event revealing that the company is no longer going to overly focus on its 90% CPU market share. The company is now aiming to have a 30% share in a $230 billion (expected to grow to $300 billion) silicon total available market (TAM) over the next 4 years. Swan pointed out at the event that Intel was going to shift more of its attention towards AI and FPGAs. This deal delivers on that strategy.
