The buyout may well be a hedge against NVIDIA. The graphics firm has been big on accelerating AI in both self-driving car systems and its high-powered graphics cards. It could face serious challenges if Intel offers similar power, especially if it's in a run-of-the-mill server that doesn't need pricey extras to handle machine learning tasks. Whether or not Intel is targeting NVIDIA, there's no question that it's getting serious about one of the hottest fields in tech.