The field of artificial intelligence (AI) is red hot at the moment with new applications threatening to disrupt the way we drive, the way we communicate and many many other features of modern life. Tech giants such as Tesla, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Baidu and all the rest are pouring major funds into developing the most advanced thinking machines that will dominate the economy of tomorrow.

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Now Finance Magnates has exclusively learned that Bitmain, the world’s largest bitcoin mining hardware producer, headquartered in Beijing, has decided to throw its hat into the AI ring as well. Today we visited the offices of Bitmaintech Israel, Bitmain’s first R&D center outside of China, for an interview with its manager, Gadi Glikberg.

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As the head of the group’s first non-Chinese branch, Glikberg is also in charge of growing Bitmain’s presence in the West. He shared with us that they are now actively looking for AI experts to establish an R&D team in Israel. Leveraging its engineering prowess for AI applications could become Bitmain’s first major business avenue outside the bitcoin world.

It makes sense that Bitmain choose Israel for this new venture as it has a growing AI research and development ecosystem. Just last month the computer-chip giant Intel Corp (INTC.O) announced that it is acquiring Mobileye, a Jerusalem-based leader in computer vision for autonomous driving technology, for over $15 billion.

Keep following Finance Magnates for the full interview with Glikberg. We talked about bitcoin cloud mining, the risk of a bitcoin hard fork, why nobody is selling ASICs for Ethereum, the race for cheap electricity and much more.