Intel Capital leads investment in Israeli AI-processor startup Habana Labs.
Intel Capital, the investment arm of US technology giant Intel Corp., has invested in Israeli startup Habana Labs, a maker of artificial intelligence-based processors and chips, as part of a $75 million Series B funding round led by Intel Capital. Other investors in the round were WRV Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, Battery Ventures and existing investors. Since its founding in 2016, Habana Labs has raised a total of $120 million. The company designs chips and outsources their manufacturing, with offices in Tel Aviv and San Jose, California, and 120 employees worldwide.
Habana Labs uses artificial intelligence to improve the processing performance of chips and lower their costs and power consumption, with processors aimed at the specific needs of training deep neural networks. The startup's first processor, Goya, has already set two industry records—for efficiency, delivering 15,088 images/second throughput, and for power efficiency with 151 images/second/watt, offering performance that is one to three times better than solutions commonly used in data centers today. The company is planning to release a training processor solution for testing in the second quarter of 2019.
"We are humbled by the trust deposited in us by such a dream team of investors, including the world's leading semiconductor company, Intel," said David Dahan, chief executive officer of Habana Labs. The funding will be used to continue the development of its chips and training solutions, including the firm's next generation 7nm AI processors, and to increase its sales and customer support teams. Wendell Brooks, senior vice president of Intel Corporation and president of Intel Capital, said Habana Labs' team has a "proven track record in the industry" and that "Habana Labs' innovation and execution on their vision will help drive the next evolution of Artificial Intelligence."
Lip-Bu Tan, founding partner of WRV Capital, stated that artificial intelligence is paving the way for "a significant wave of new semiconductor companies, and venture firms are heavily investing in AI-focused chip startups," adding that "Among all AI semiconductor startups, Habana Labs is the first, and still the only one, which introduced a production-ready AI processor." Intel Capital has invested since 1991 a total of $12.3 billion in 1,544 companies worldwide, with more than 660 portfolio companies having gone public or participated in a merger. Intel Capital started investing in Israel in 1997 and had invested more than $375 million in some 80 Israeli startups as of the first half of 2018, including Alcide, Anobit (which was sold to Apple in 2012), OrCam and Moovit. Intel Capital made six investments in Israel in 2017, and in May, Yair Shoham, part of the team in charge of investments for Intel's venture capital arm in Israel, told The Times of Israel that Intel would be stepping up its investments locally, and they would be "significant in size," stating this represented Intel's strategy to be at the "forefront of innovation."