The new unit will lead by Naveen Rao, the former CEO of Nervana, which Intel acquired last year.

Intel has formed a new artificial intelligence (AI) unit, which will consolidate all of its AI efforts under one roof.

The new unit has been named Artificial Intelligence Products Group and will be led by Naveen Rao as the vice president and general manager of the unit.

He was the former CEO of Nervana, an AI start-up that was acquired by Intel last year for $400m.

Naveen Rao said: “This organisation is about aligning our focus. The new organisation will align resources from across the company to include engineering, labs, software and more as we build on our current leading AI portfolio: the Intel Nervana platform, a full-stack of hardware and software AI offerings that our customers are looking for from us.”

“In addition, we will be creating an applied AI research lab dedicated to pushing the forefronts of computing.

“We will be exploring novel architectural and algorithmic approaches to inform future generations of AI. This includes a range of solutions from the data center to edge devices, and from training to inference – all designed to enable Intel and its customers to innovate faster. This will be the home for AI innovation at Intel.”

Intel recently acquired Mobileye, a company in the development of computer vision for application in self-driving vehicles for $13.3bn. The company plans to support the development of self-driving vehicles. Prior to the acquisition, Intel, BMW and Mobileye collaborated to develop autonomous vehicles.

Before this, in 2015, the company also acquired Altera, a manufacturer of programmable logic devices for $16.7bn.

Rao believes that AI will add new capabilities to things like smart factories, drones, sports, health care and driverless car with data will be at the heart of everything.

Since data is the common thread to all applications, the company needs to develop solution which will create, use and utilise large volume of data, he added.

The company also added that it will rally the industry around a set of standards for AI which will help in bringing down the cost, to make it accessible to large number of customers, instead of limiting its use by institutions, governments and large companies.