LF Deep Learning signs up 5 more members, names AT&T's Gilbert as governing board chair

The Linux Foundation's LF Deep Learning Foundation announced it has added Ciena, DiDi, Intel, Orange and Red Hat to its membership roster.

Open source communities truly thrive when there's an array of vendors and service providers adding to the collective brain trust. With the recent additions, Deep Learning now has 15 members since it was first formed earlier this year.

The addition of Orange was notable, but Deep Learning is still missing some key service provider players, such as Verizon, BT, CenturyLink, Deutsche Telekom and Telefónica, which seem content to pursue machine learning and artificial intelligence on their own.

The LF Deep Learning Foundation, which is an umbrella organization focused on driving open source innovation in artificial intelligence, machine learning and deep learning, first kicked off in March with founding members Amdocs, AT&T, B.Yond, Baidu, Huawei, Nokia, Tech Mahindra, Tencent, Univa and ZTE.

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The new members will bring new resources to bear for the community to develop and expand open source artificial intelligence, machine learning and deep learning projects such as the Acumos AI Project.

AT&T and Tech Mahindra announced in October of last year that they were teaming up on the AI and machine learning Acumos platform with the goal of putting it in to open source. Acumos was created to simplify the development of AI while also providing a marketplace for accessing, using and enhancing AI apps. Acumos went live in March in conjunction with the Open Networking Summit.

In addition to the new members, the Deep Learning Foundation also announced that AT&T's Mazin Gilbert has been elected as its governing board chair. Gilbert, vice president of advanced technology and systems at AT&T Labs, has been AT&T's leading proponent of Acumos and Deep Learning, and he's also the technical steering committee  chair of the Open Network Automation Platform.

"We have now 15 members in the Deep Learning umbrella and we've made tremendous progress in the past few months," Gilbert said in an interview with FierceTelecom before the new members were announced. "Some of the big players who have already joined have contributed a substantial amount of code."