Intel spun out its RealSense subsidiary, in the latest chapter of the embattled chip giant's restructuring saga.

Friday saw the computer vision (CV) firm announce its independence from Intel with the close of a $50 million Series A funding round.

Funding was led by what RealSense described as a “renowned semiconductor private equity firm," with investments also from Intel Capital and MediaTek's Innovation Fund investment arm.

RealSense stated the round supports its focus on bringing the AI tech of computer vision – visual recognition for machines that emulate human sight – to the robotics and biometric fields. Intel and MediaTek’s interest comes from the chips needed to power such sophisticated vision systems, along with AI technologies in general.

That demand has seen fellow chip companies like Broadcom project that AI is poised within a few years to become its dominant semiconductor driver.

Research houses such as IDC concur, predicting demand for AI and high-performance computing (HPC) will drive 15% growth in the global semiconductor market this year, with the memory segment expected to surge by more than 24% due to AI-driven advances in high-bandwidth memory technology.

Intel is aware of where the winds are headed. April saw the chip giant appoint a new AI officer in its pivot to develop edge AI chips for PCs and devices, instead of the cloud compute market.

On Thursday, new CEO Lip-Bu Tan admitted that it was “too late” for Intel to catch up with Nvidia on chip development for AI training. The CEO added that the embattled firm is “not in the top 10 of semiconductor companies."

As part of its edge ambitions, the company is looking to make Intel Foundry its key focus. That has seen the company plan to cut up to 20% of its manufacturing workforce; lay off 15,000 workers in the second half of 2024; and hollow out its marketing and automotive divisions.

Monday saw its networking CTO jump ship to Cisco, demonstrating the lessened importance of networks in Intel’s new vision.

The RealSense spinout is part of the same narrative. The subsidiary originated in 2013 as part of Intel’s Perceptual Computing line, rebranding to RealSense in 2014.

Its depth and tracking CV technologies are used in autonomous drones, robots, AR/VR, and smart home devices.

Prior to Lip-Bu Tan's tenure, Intel spun out generative AI (genAI) platform Articul8 in January 2024. June's shut down of Intel Automotive remains Intel's only subsidiary closure in its new era under Tan.