IBM mulls using its own AI chip in new cloud service to lower costs

FILE PHOTO: The logo for IBM is displayed on a screen on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., June 27, 2018. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid//File Photo

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - International Business Machines (IBM) is considering the use of artificial intelligence chips that it designed in-house to lower the costs of operating a cloud computing service it made widely available this week, an executive said Tuesday.

In an interview with Reuters at a semiconductor conference in San Francisco, Mukesh Khare, general manager of IBM Semiconductors, said the company is contemplating using a chip called the Artificial Intelligence Unit as part of its new "watsonx" cloud service.