Machine learning and artificial intelligence startup Turi has been acquired by Apple, multiple sources confirmed on GeekWire.
The acquisition reflects Apple’s push into artificial intelligence and machine learning. It will also further expand Apple’s Seattle office space, where the company has been building engineering offices for the past two years.
Asked about the deal, Apple responded in a statement, saying, “Apple buys small technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our acquisition objectives and plans.”
Multiple sources confirm that Turi has been acquired. The deal was said to be worth about $200 million, with a huge return for early investors and early shareholders. Carlos Guestrin, a University of Washington professor who founded the company, declined to comment.
Turi’s team will remain in the Seattle area and continue to grow as Apple further develops its technology in data science, artificial intelligence and machine learning, according to people familiar with the matter. Turi’s recent high-profile Data Science Summit in San Francisco demonstrated its leadership in the field.
Apple’s plans for Turi are unclear. But by expanding its Siri personal assistant and related technology, the company is advancing ARTIFICIAL intelligence broadly.
This is Apple’s second acquisition of a Seattle company in the past two years. In 2014, the tech giant bought secretive cloud startup Union Bay Networks, a move that eventually led apple to open an engineering office in Seattle.
Turi allows developers to build applications with machine learning and artificial intelligence capabilities that can be automatically expanded and adapted. Its products are designed to help organizations large and small understand data better, including the Turi Machine Learning Platform, GraphLab Create, Turi Distributed, and Turi Predictive services. User cases include recommendation engines, fraud detection, churn prediction, sentiment analysis, and customer segmentation.
The company was born in 2009 as an open-source project led by Gostrin at Carnegie Mellon University. He joined the University of Washington in 2012. Jeff Bezos, amazon’s founder and CHIEF executive, gave A $2 million grant to Gostrin and his wife, Emily Fox, two machine learning professors at the university. Later, Gostrin spun the open source project out of the University of Washington and turned it into a company. At the time, the company was called GraphLab. Gostrin remains an “Amazon Professor of machine Learning” at the University of Washington, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Giiso Information, founded in 2013, is a leading technology provider in the field of “artificial intelligence + information” in China, with top technologies in big data mining, intelligent semantics, knowledge mapping and other fields. At the same time, its research and development products include editing robots, writing robots and other artificial intelligence products! With its strong technical strength, the company has received angel round investment at the beginning of its establishment, and received pre-A round investment of $5 million from GSR Venture Capital in August 2015.
A year after the spinoff, the company raised $6.75 million in Series A funding from Madrona Venture Group, A leading Seattle-based Venture capital firm, and NEA. It refinanced for $18.5 million in January 2015.
Turi is one of a handful of companies in the Seattle area developing machine learning and artificial intelligence technology. Some believe the region will become the center of this emerging field.
Giiso information, founded in 2013, is the first domestic high-tech enterprise focusing on the research and development of intelligent information processing technology and the development and operation of core software for writing robots. At the beginning of its establishment, the company received angel round investment, and in August 2015, GSR Venture Capital received $5 million pre-A round of investment.
Apple has made about 15 acquisitions since the beginning of 2015, including two TURi-like AI/machine learning startups Perceptio and VocalIQ. Apple’s 2016 acquisitions include facial recognition startup Emotient, education startup LearnSprout, spatial awareness startup Flyby Media, and firmware security startup LegbaCore.
Earlier this year, Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, signaled that the company was open to making larger acquisitions as iPhone sales declined. Apple’s cash pile now stands at $231 billion, according to its most recent quarterly results. “We will continue to be externally focused and we will remain very active in the M&A market.” Cook said at the time. We (hui)