Without intelligence, the Universe may as well not even exist.
The subatomic particles that make us up are as old as the universe. They were created an instant after the Big Bang. We are inanimate matter formed into self organizing self aware intelligences. Without consciousness and sentience, the universe is nothing.
As Delenn, on Babylon 5, said so eloquently, "We are star stuff. We are the universe made manifest, trying to figure itself out". No one can argue with that.