Intelligence Inside: https://flic.kr/p/KSVnz5
Congratulations to Intel on their acquisition of Nervana today. This photo is from the last board meeting at DFJ; the Nervana founders — from right to left: Naveen Rao, Amir Khosrowshahi and Arjun Bansal — pondered where on the wall they may fall during M&A negotiations.
We are now free to share some of our perspective on the company and its its mission to accelerate the future with custom chips for deep learning. In my blog post, I’ll share a recap of the Nervana story, from an investor’s perspective, and try to explain why machine learning is of fundamental importance to every business over time. In short, I think the application of iterative algorithms (e.g., machine learning, directed evolution, generative design) to build complex systems is the most powerful advance in engineering since the Scientific Method. Machine learning allows us to build software solutions that exceed human understanding, and shows us how AI can innervate every industry.
By crude analogy, Nervana is recapitulating the evolutionary history of the human brain within computing — moving from the logical constructs of the reptilian brain to the cortical constructs of the human brain, with massive arrays of distributed memory and iterative learning algorithms.
UPDATE: here is the new home for the blog post https://flic.kr/p/KSVnz5
In-depth article: http://www.xconomy.com/san-diego/2016/08/11/nervanas-400m-buyout-reflects-key-tech-trend-in-machine-learning/
And some early press:
MIT Tech Review: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602137/intel-buys-a-startup-to-catch-up-in-deep-learning/
Re/Code: http://www.recode.net/2016/8/9/12413600/intel-buys-nervana–350-million
WSJ: http://www.wsj.com/articles/intel-apple-add-to-artificial-intelligence-deal-wave-1470772801
Fortune: http://fortune.com/2016/08/09/intel-machine-learning-nervana/
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