Intel revealed it generated $1 billion from customers running artificial intelligence (AI) on its chips in 2017, as it eyes a projected $200 billion market opportunity for its data-centric businesses in 2022.

In a post on its website, EVP and general manager of Intel’s Data Centre Group Navin Shenoy outlined the company’s push around “data-centric” computing, and AI in particular, as it revealed a revenue figure for the technology for the first time.

He said it pulled in revenue of more than $1 billion revenue in 2017 from customers running AI on Intel Xeon processors in the data centre, which he said showed investments in the technology are “paying off”.

“We continue to improve AI training and inference performance. In total, since 2014, our performance has improved well over 200 times,” said Shenoy.

In recent years, Intel focussed on providing computing power for web-based applications in data centres, as its once core PC sales continue on a downward trend.

Shenoy stated helping customers “move, store and process data” was “the biggest opportunity in the history of the company”, as it set the long-term revenue target for its data-centric businesses.

He explained a new era of data-centric computing involving increasing proliferation of the cloud; the impending transition of 5G; and the growth of AI and analytics “have driven a profound shift in the market, creating massive amounts of largely untapped data”.

“And when you add the growth in processing power, breakthroughs in connectivity, storage, memory and algorithms, we end up with a completely new way of thinking about infrastructure.”