Intel announced on December 16 that it has acquired Habana Labs, a Israeli-based provider of programmable deep learning accelerators for data centers, for $ 2 billion. The acquisition will strengthen Intel's artificial intelligence product portfolio and accelerate its development in emerging markets for rapidly growing artificial intelligence chips. According to Intel earlier estimates, this market size will exceed 25 billion US dollars by 2024.

Navin Shenoy, executive vice president and general manager of Intel ’s Data Platform Group, said, "This acquisition advances our artificial intelligence strategy, from intelligent edge to data center, to provide customers with solutions that meet a variety of performance needs. Specifically, With the high-performance training processor family and standards-based programming environment, Habana Labs has greatly enhanced the strength of our data center artificial intelligence products."

Intel artificial intelligence solutions are now helping customers turn data into business value and generate significant revenue. In 2019, Intel predicts that the revenue generated by the artificial intelligence business will exceed US $ 3.5 billion, an increase of more than 20% year-on-year. Together, Intel and Habana will bring first-rate artificial intelligence products to the data center acceleration to meet customers' changing needs.

Upon completion of the acquisition, Habana will serve as an independent business unit and will continue to be led by the current management team. The acquisition will enable Habana to take full advantage of Intel's artificial intelligence capabilities, including deep expertise and accumulated resources in artificial intelligence software, algorithms and research over the past three years, which will help Habana continue to expand and accelerate development.