IBM to Invest $240 Million to Develop AI Research Lab With MIT
- Company seeks hardware, artificial intelligence applications
- Research may add to line of Watson-branded businesss
IBM offices in New York.
Photographer: Craig Warga/BloombergIBM will spend $240 million over 10 years to develop an artificial intelligence research lab with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, pooling the organizations’ resources as competition intensifies to produce breakthroughs in the field.
The MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab will fund projects in four broad areas, including creating better hardware to handle complex computations and figuring out applications of AI in specific industries, the Armonk, New York-based company said Thursday in a statement. While IBM has always conducted long-term research internally, it decided AI was such a vast field that it needed to reach out for talent and ideas, said John Kelly, the head of International Business Machines Corp.’s research and cognitive solutions groups, which includes Watson products.