Intel Secures AI Partnerships For FinServ, Supply Chains

Intel has struck new collaborations with artificial intelligence (AI) companies to broaden its enterprise AI capabilities. A press release on Tuesday (Sept. 4) said Chinese technology firm Baidu is working with Intel to combine their artificial intelligence and cloud technologies. The companies plan to apply their initiatives to a range of industries, including financial services (FinServ) and shipping.

Baidu’s Baidu Cloud solution will integrate Intel’s Xeon Scalable processors, as well as Intel’s Math Kernel Library-Deep Neural Network technologies, to develop financial technologies for banks in China. According to the companies, Baido is developing private financial clouds for an array of financial service providers, including China Union Pay and AI Bank. Those clouds run on Intel processors.

Baidu is leveraging Intel technology for solutions in other industries, including video and shipping. In the latter case, Baidu Cloud is developing a solution for businesses to monitor trucking fleets in real time. Intel AI video analysis technology will allow managers to monitor multiple trucks at once, to provide real-time alerts of anomalous activity, like items or waste falling from a vehicle.

“Intel is collaborating with Baidu Cloud to deliver end-to-end AI solutions,” said Raejeanne Skillern, Intel vice president of Data Center Group and general manager of its Cloud Service Provider Platform Group, in a statement. “Adopting a new chip or optimizing a single framework is not enough to meet the demands of new AI workloads. What’s required is systems-level integration with software optimization, and Intel is enabling this through our expertise and extensive portfolio of AI technologies — all in the name of helping our customers achieve their AI goals.”

In another press release Tuesday, Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) provider Netrolix announced plans to work with Intel at the Artificial Intelligence Conference this week, held in San Francisco. The company noted that it is using Intel chipsets “because of their broad compatibility in the networking world, the consistency in the Linux kernel across different chipsets and their ability to run x86 software,” explained Netrolix Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Osamah Ali in a statement.

“Add to that the fact that Intel often offers chipsets with lower power consumption, which help Netrolix with our [Internet of Things (IoT)] and unmanned aerial vehicles support, [and] require nonstandard interfaces,” he continued.