PORTLAND — Chipmaker Intel, eager to expand its business, said Tuesday it has purchased a San Diego startup called Nervana.
The companies did not disclose terms of their deal, but online tech journal Recode pegged the transaction at more than $350 million.
Founded by former Qualcomm researcher Naveen Rao, Nervana aims to apply “neural network learning” to computers. Machine learning gives computers a humanlike ability to improve their performance over time by observing results and adjusting their actions in response.
Artificial intelligence can solve arcane computing problems or for practical applications like determining which kind of shampoo an online shopper is most likely to buy. It’s a hot sector in computing, with Nvidia, Google and others designing chips to serve the market.