• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, August 10, 2016

Following the lead of Apple and other tech giants, Intel is investing in deep learning and artificial intelligence with the acquisition of Nervana Systems.

“AI is all around us, from the commonplace (talk-to-text, photo tagging, fraud detection) to the cutting edge (precision medicine, injury prediction, autonomous cars),” Diane Bryant, EVP and general manager of the Data Center Group at Intel, notes in a new blog post.

“Encompassing compute methods like advanced data analytics, computer vision, natural language processing and machine learning, artificial intelligence is transforming the way businesses operate and how people engage with the world,” Bryant added. “Machine learning, and its subset deep learning, are key methods for the expanding field of AI.”

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but reports put the acquisition at around $408 million.

The news comes on the heels of Apple’s agreement to buy machine learning and artificial intelligence startup Turi for $200 million. Turi is perhaps best known for building apps that utilize machine learning and AI.

More broadly, tech titans like Google and Facebook are using machine learning to improve search speeds, and classify images and facial recognition.

To that end, Facebook opened an AI research lab in Paris last year. Like its existing AI teams in Menlo Park, New York and London, the Paris hub is tackling long-term research projects in image recognition, natural language processing, speech recognition and the kinds of physical and logical infrastructure required to run these systems.

Facebook chose Paris because France is recognized as a hotbed for AI research -- and the home nation of Yann LeCun, the head of Facebook AI Research (FAIR) since late 2013.

Google and Yahoo have also endeavored to harness deep learning to enhance their services. Futurist and AI expert Ray Kurzweil joined Google in 2013 after Larry Page convinced him to explore concepts in his book “How To Create A Mind.”