Computer chip maker Micron Technology Inc. said today it will throw $100 million at artificial intelligence startups as it seeks to create new markets for its semiconductor technology.

The company announced the new fund during the opening day of its inaugural Micron Insight 2018 conference in San Francisco this week. It said the plan is to invest in AI startups working on building self-driving vehicles, factory automation systems and other areas.

Micron’s motivation stems from wanting to sell more of its memory chips, so AI is a high priority because it demands massive amounts of data for training algorithms and deep learning and machine learning models.

“As companies develop more complex AI and start working on more advanced use cases, the hardware used to train and run those models will become increasingly more important,” the company said. “This requires a detailed look at compute, memory and storage configurations to avoid performance and throughput bottlenecks and drive faster, better results.”

Micron hopes that by investing in AI startups, it can help to spur adoption of the technology and thus create more demand for its memory chips. To that end, it’s planning to invest in both hardware and software startups, the company said.

Micron President and Chief Executive Sanjay Mehrotra (pictured) appeared today on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE’s mobile event livestreaming studio, to discuss the new fund, where he revealed a key element was about promoting diversity in AI.

“Our $100 million fund is targeted towards supporting startups, but what I’m really excited about is that 20 percent of this fund will go to startups that have leadership represented by women or groups that are underrepresented in tech today,” Mehrotra said. “We want to be in the front row with startups as this will help us to accelerate time to market of various AI applications.”

Separate from the new fund, Micron said it’s providing an additional $1 million toward AI research via grants from its nonprofit Micron Foundation. The grants will be made available to universities and nonprofit organizations working on AI research.

Among the first recipients of these grants are Stanford University’s Precision Health and Integrated Diagnostics Center, which Mehrotra said is researching how AI can be used in fields such as disease prevention. “This is a very exciting field that will enrich life and prolong life in the future,” the CEO said.

Also benefiting is the University of California, Berkeley’s AI Research Lab and an institution called AI4ALL, which works to promote diversity and inclusion in AI education, research, development and policy.

Photo: SiliconANGLE