AI Hubs Gain Major Investments

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AI Hubs Gain Major Investments

Investors Back New AI Hubs in New York, Midwest Cities

In 2017, AI and machine learning advanced to a degree that they promised to change everything. As computer hubs begin to expand worldwide, the usual names of Silicon Valley, or Seattle, Montreal, Toronto, Berlin, London are being followed by new projects throughout the world.

Big money is being invested in places like Pittsburg, where Bosch has made a huge investment into the Bosch Center for Artificial Intelligence.

Bosch in North America today announced the launch of the Bosch Center for Artificial Intelligence (BCAI) Research Lab in Pittsburgh. The new location is the next step in BCAI’s mission to partner with leading institutions around the world to jointly accelerate AI research. Bosch plans to build a team of up to 20 AI experts at Bosch’s Pittsburgh Technology Center by the end of 2019.

BCAI Pittsburgh is the most recent addition to BCAI’s locations around the globe, which already include Renningen, Germany; Sunnyvale, California; and Bangalore, India.

Further east in New York, IBM is investing $2 billion into a new artificial intelligence research hub in New York as part of its efforts to boost growth from emerging technologies, according to a story in Bloomberg.

The hub addition will be known as The AI Hardware Center at the SUNY Polytechnic Institute campus in Albany, New York, will focus on computer-chip research, development, prototyping, testing, and simulation, IBM said in a statement earlier this month.

The Governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, says the center will add hundreds of jobs and attract new companies in the field of AI and federal research.

“Artificial intelligence has the potential to transform how we live and how businesses operate, and this partnership with IBM will help ensure New York continues to be on the cutting edge developing innovative technologies,” Cuomo said in a statement.

IBM knows it is behind some other giants such as Amazon and Microsoft when it comes to cloud applications.

IBM also plans to expand and extend its partnership with SUNY Poly for the Center for Semiconductor Research, which is set to expire at the end of 2021.

Another major project, the Discovery Partnership Institute in Chicago, will be built through partnerships between seven universities. University of Illinois System President Timothy Killeen signed an agreement with his counterpart at Tel Aviv University regarding that institution’s plan to be DPI’s first international partner. He also spent last week traveling across India to sign DPI pacts with seven universities and research agencies in that country.

DPI hopes for a partnership with The University of Illinois at Chicago and Northern Illinois University, as part of its Illinois Innovation Network. In August, Bill Sanders, who heads the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign electrical and computer engineering department, was named an interim director of DPI. He said at that time that he expects the center to be open by 2021 and fully functioning by 2023.

A rendering of plans for the Discovery Partners Institute in Chicago.

About the Author: Paul Morris

Morris has a background in multimedia and is a published author. He also has spent years in radio broadcasting, the music industry, and is now a contributor to Seeflection.com.