Intel is launching a new independent AI software company with investment firm DigitalBridge. The brand new Articul8 is going to help enterprise customers adopt generative AI. Given the close relationship it maintains with Intel, it looks like it will primarily seek to drive integrations with the chipmaker’s hardware.
While stressing that Articul8 will be an independent company, the announcement also notes that it will remain “strategically aligned” with Intel. Arun Subramaniyan, who was previously VP & GM at the Data Center & AI Group at Intel, will become CEO of Articul8.
Specifically, Articul8 will provide a “full-stack, vertically optimized and secure” AI software platform. It will do so using IP and technology developed at Intel. The company refrains from going into further detail about the specific tech used. Nevertheless, we already know what this means: all Intel hardware is now integrated with each other to bring “AI everywhere”, ensuring developers can build applications that seemlessly plug into whatever silicon is on hand.
Articul8 as a driver of the (Intel) AI ecosystem
According to Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, Articul8 benefits from “deep AI and HPC domain expertise” to assist customers. That in all likelihood means it will get its clients to deploy, for example, the OpenVINO toolkit developed by Intel. Fuelled by the aim to let developers “write once, deploy anywhere,” this tool is set up to run AI workloads within all sorts of hardware environments.
This means that AI workloads may be executed on a Xeon chip in a data center or to enable lightweight AI applications on employee laptops. In theory, this open-source solution could also be deployed for competing chips, although it hasn’t developed into the go-to standard in this fledgling market. In any case, it is the basis for the new AI ecosystem developed by Intel, which it aims to popularize.
This line of thinking is very reminiscent of that of Nvidia, which has long provided the GPU-focused software to let developers easily develop applications that primarily leverage the computing power of Nvidia chips. In doing so, that company has been enormously successful. Articul8 is already optimized for Intel’s own enterprise-focused Gaudi GPUs, meaning it’s aiming to reduce Nvidia’s dominance by however much it can.
Speed, security and cost efficiency
With its new offering, Articul8 promises to provide a fast, secure and efficient platform that can be deployed immediately. Together with the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), the company has already scaled up the software to be ready for enterprise applications. The collaboration with BCG has already been going strong for two years. Potential customers are to be found in the financial, aerospace, semiconductor and telco.
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