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Intel unveils new AI data center chip “Crescent Island” to relaunch AI ambitions

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Intel has announced plans to launch a new artificial intelligence chip for data centers next year, marking a renewed effort to reclaim ground in the booming AI hardware market dominated by Nvidia and AMD.

The new GPU, named Crescent Island, will prioritize energy efficiency and be optimized for AI inference workloads, Intel Chief Technology Officer Sachin Katti said at the Open Compute Summit on Tuesday. “It emphasizes our focus on inference, optimized for AI, and for delivering the best performance per dollar,” Katti said.

The announcement represents Intel’s latest bid to reenter the AI race after CEO Lip-Bu Tan pledged to restart the company’s stalled AI programs, including the Gaudi and Falcon Shores lines. Despite trailing competitors, Intel hopes to capture a meaningful share of the rapidly expanding data center market fueled by generative AI adoption since ChatGPT’s 2022 debut.

Crescent Island will feature 160 gigabytes of memory, though slower than the high-bandwidth memory (HBM) used in AMD and Nvidia’s top-tier AI chips. The chip will be based on Intel’s existing consumer GPU architecture, underscoring the company’s modular approach that allows customers to mix and match chips from multiple vendors.

Intel also committed to releasing new data center AI chips annually, matching the cadence of rivals AMD, Nvidia, and major cloud providers developing their own silicon.

The move follows Nvidia’s $5 billion investment in Intel, which gave it a 4% stake and launched a partnership to co-develop future AI and PC chips. Katti said the collaboration aims to ensure Intel CPUs remain integrated into AI systems worldwide as the company seeks to position itself as an indispensable player in next-generation computing.

Nvidia-backed AI lab Lila Sciences hits $1.3 billion valuation after new funding

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Lila Sciences, a fast-growing AI startup focused on scientific discovery, has raised $115 million in an extension of its Series A round led by Nvidia’s venture arm, pushing its valuation above $1.3 billion, the company told Reuters. The latest investment brings Lila’s total Series A funding to $350 million and its cumulative capital raised to $550 million, underscoring investors’ confidence in AI for science.

Founded in 2023 by Flagship Pioneering, Lila aims to create what it calls “scientific superintelligence” — a network of specialized AI systems paired with automated laboratories capable of running continuous experiments. Its investors include General Catalyst and a subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.

Lila said the funds will speed up the rollout of its AI Science Factories, vast facilities equipped with robotic instruments controlled by AI. The company recently signed a 235,500-square-foot lease in Cambridge, Massachusetts, one of the largest new lab spaces in the Greater Boston area this year.

The startup plans to open its AI platform to commercial customers, allowing companies in energy, semiconductors, and pharmaceuticals to use its automated systems for scientific discovery. Unlike traditional AI labs focused on internet data, Lila’s approach generates proprietary experimental data, which it says is key to the next era of AI-driven innovation.

CEO Geoffrey von Maltzahn said the company’s mission is to accelerate the scientific method itself. “It will set in motion the scientific method in a new form,” he said, describing how Lila’s technology has already produced thousands of discoveries across life sciences, chemistry, and materials research.

Oracle to deploy AMD’s MI450 AI chips in major cloud expansion

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Oracle announced plans to integrate Advanced Micro Devices’ (AMD) upcoming MI450 artificial intelligence chips into its cloud infrastructure, with deployment scheduled to begin in the third quarter of 2026. The companies said the initial rollout will include 50,000 processors, with further expansion expected through 2027 and beyond.

The partnership marks a major win for AMD, securing another top-tier client for its next-generation AI chips, while giving Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) a competitive boost in the global race to provide compute power for AI model training and deployment. “Demand for large-scale AI capacity is accelerating as next-generation AI models outgrow the limits of current clusters,” the companies said in a joint statement.

The announcement comes as demand for AI hardware surges amid the explosion of applications like ChatGPT. AMD’s shares rose over 3% in premarket trading, defying broader market weakness driven by renewed U.S.-China trade tensions, while Oracle’s stock slipped about 1%.

AMD recently unveiled a multi-year deal with OpenAI to supply the same MI450 chips, in an agreement that gives the ChatGPT developer an option to acquire up to 10% of AMD. The companies are also collaborating on a 1-gigawatt AI data facility based on the chip architecture.

The new AI superclusters at Oracle will use AMD’s “Helios” rack design, a fully integrated system combining GPUs and CPUs, mirroring Nvidia’s own rack-scale solutions. The deal underscores AMD’s ambition to challenge Nvidia’s dominance in the high-performance AI hardware market.