Intel acquires Israeli Company Habana Labs for $2 billion
Earlier this month it has been published from several sources that Intel is in advanced negotiations for the acquisition of artificial intelligence chip developer Habana Labs Ltd., and today it has been finally announced that the acquisition will be taken place. This is Intel’s second-largest acquisition of an Israeli company, following its $15.3 billion acquisition of automotive chipmaker Mobileye in 2017.
Founded in 2016, Habana Labs develops processors optimized for AI applications. Among its products is Goya, an AI Training Processor for data centers, which the company says will deliver an increase in throughput of up to four times over systems built with equivalent number GPUs, and Gaudi, an AI Inference Processor launched a year ago. Habana Labs operate in Tel Aviv, Caesarea, San Jose, Beijing, Poland, and California. The research and development center is placed in Poland. Since it was founded, the company raised $120 million, $75 million of the sum in a November 2018 round led by Intel Capital, along with Lip-Bu Tan’s WRV Capital (Lip-Bu Tan is CEO of Cadence Design Systems), Bessemer Venture Partners, Battery Ventures, Samsung and others.
Habana Labs’ chairman is Israeli tech entrepreneur Avigdor Willenz, who was one of the founders of Galileo Technologies Ltd. which was sold in 2000 to Marvell Technology Group Ltd. for $2.7 billion. Willenz also co-founded Annapurna Labs, which was sold to Amazon for $370 million in 2015. The company is also co-founded by David Dahan, the CEO and Ran Halutz, its VP R&D, both former executives at PrimeSense Limited, acquired by Apple for over $345 million in 2013, where their technology was integrated into Apple’s iPhone X. Habana Labs’ chief business officer is Eitan Medina, who was VP Product Definition at Gallileo Technology.
Intel Corporation (commonly known as Intel) is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, in the Silicon Valley. It is the world’s second-largest and second highest valued semiconductor chip manufacturer based on revenue after being overtaken by Samsung Electronics and is the inventor of the x86 series of microprocessors, the processors found in most personal computers (PCs). Intel has over 12,000 employees in Israel directly and another 1,100 through its subsidiary Mobileye. A large part of its local employees is based in its Haifa research and development center, where many of Intel’s main chips are developed.
Widely regarded as one of the startup leaders in developing artificial intelligence chips, Habana Labs hit their acquisition target by the American semiconductor giant, and another success story has been written down in the pages of Israeli Innovation.
