Apple scoops up Inductive, a machine-learning start-up

Apple has acquired Inductiv Inc., a machine-learning start-up, reports Bloomberg. The engineering team joined the tech giant in recent weeks to work on Siri, machine learning, and data science, the article adds.

Inductiv was co-founded by machine-learning professors from Stanford University, the University of Waterloo and the University of Wisconsin, Madison. The professor from Stanford, Christopher Ré, previously co-founded another AI company, Lattice Data, that was bought by Apple in 2017. It’s unclear if Ré, or the other Inductiv co-founders, Theodoros Rekatsinas and Ihab Ilyas, have joined Apple.

Apple has scooped up several similar companies in recent years, including Voysis (an artificial intelligence start-up), Xnor.ai (which specialized in low-power, edge-based AI tools), Turi, (a machine-learning platform for developers and data scientists), Perceptio (a startup developing technology to let companies run advanced AI systems on smartphones without needing to share as much user data), Tuplejump (a data mining and analysis platform), Silk Labs (“machine learning company using on-device AI to empower businesses to build the next generation of intelligent connected devices”), Next VR (a live event streaming AR/VR company), and Laserlike (which built a web scale content search, discovery and personalization platform using advanced machine learning).