The News: Intel and DigitalBridge Group have teamed up to create Articul8 AI, Inc., a new independent company that will offer enterprise customers a full-stack, vertically integrated generative AI software platform. Created with intellectual property and technology developed at Intel, the platform is designed to provide AI capabilities within the cloud, on-premises, or in a hybrid deployment. Arun Subramaniyan, formerly vice president and general manager in Intel’s Data Center and AI Group, has assumed leadership of Articul8 as its CEO. You can read the release from Articul8 on Intel’s website.
Intel and DigitalBridge Group Announce the Formation of Articul8
Analyst Take: Chip giant Intel Corp. and investment firm DigitalBridge Group Inc. announced the formation of a new company that will offer enterprise customers a full-stack, vertically optimized and secure generative AI software platform. Articul8 AI’s offering, a generative AI platform focused on providing AI capabilities that keep customer data, training, and inference safely within the enterprise security perimeter, was formed using intellectual property (IP) and technology developed at Intel. According to the press release announcing the deal, the two companies will remain strategically aligned on go-to-market opportunities and collaborate on driving generative AI adoption in the enterprise.
Articul8 Developed and Tested with Real-World Client Prior to Release
Articul8 is offering what it calls a turnkey generative AI software platform designed to help large enterprise customers operationalize and scale AI. Although the platform was launched and optimized on Intel hardware architectures, including Intel Xeon Scalable processors and Intel Gaudi accelerators, it is also designed to support a range of hybrid infrastructure alternatives that are used by enterprise customers.
The technology initially was deployed at Boston Consulting Group (BCG), with a goal of letting workers retrieve answers to questions posed to the company’s knowledge base using natural language queries, instead of requiring them to search using keywords or phrases. Since its deployment, the technology has been scaled and refined, and can serve enterprise customers in industry segments requiring high levels of security and specialized domain knowledge, including financial services, aerospace, semiconductors, and telecommunications.
Creating Demand for AI Compute Via Enterprise Software
Although the Articul8 platform is designed to be hardware- and environment-agnostic, it was developed and tested on Intel hardware. As such, it appears that the goal of the venture is to help Intel carve out additional opportunities in the burgeoning enterprise market, where demand for generative AI technology and capabilities is likely to remain high over the next several years, and perhaps decades. Generative AI tasks are particularly compute intensive, and as such, the ability to forge relationships with enterprise customers can help to create a potential pipeline for Intel’s chip business for years to come.
Furthermore, as I have mentioned, extracting ROI from generative AI largely will revolve around matching the right type of data with the right models, and then selecting the appropriate hardware and infrastructure to ensure an optimal mix of cost, performance, carbon footprint, and scalability. Working closely with Articul8 as the company engages with a wide range of customers should also provide Intel with much-needed data that can be used to optimize generative AI hardware/software solutions. Creating optimized solutions may help the organization compete against entrenched AI platform vendors, particularly when courting large organizations that are seeking a truly turnkey generative AI platform.
Little Data on Privacy, Security, and Responsible AI
Articul8 is a new venture, and as such, there is little publicly released detail about how it will approach privacy, security, and the responsible use of generative AI. We expect that as the business begins acquiring enterprise customers, they will need to articulate their position on these topics and demonstrate that their controls are at least equal to those of other large AI vendors.
Disclosure: The Futurum Group is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.
Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of The Futurum Group as a whole.
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Image Credit: Intel
Author Information
Keith Kirkpatrick is VP & Research Director, Enterprise Software & Digital Workflows for The Futurum Group. Keith has over 25 years of experience in research, marketing, and consulting-based fields.
He has authored in-depth reports and market forecast studies covering artificial intelligence, biometrics, data analytics, robotics, high performance computing, and quantum computing, with a specific focus on the use of these technologies within large enterprise organizations and SMBs. He has also established strong working relationships with the international technology vendor community and is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and events.
In his career as a financial and technology journalist he has written for national and trade publications, including BusinessWeek, CNBC.com, Investment Dealers’ Digest, The Red Herring, The Communications of the ACM, and Mobile Computing & Communications, among others.
He is a member of the Association of Independent Information Professionals (AIIP).
Keith holds dual Bachelor of Arts degrees in Magazine Journalism and Sociology from Syracuse University.
