Apple Inc acquired artificial intelligence (AI) start-up Turi Inc for about US$200 million, people familiar with the situation said, in the latest deal by the iPhone maker to accumulate advanced computing capabilities for its products and services.
Turi helps developers create and manage software and services that use a form of artificial intelligence called machine learning.
It also has systems that let companies build recommendation engines, detect fraud, analyze customer usage patterns and better target potential users, according to the Seattle-based start-up’s Web site.
Apple could use this to more rapidly integrate the technology with future products.
Apple’s move on Friday is part of a broader battle among Google, Facebook Inc and Amazon.com Inc to gain an edge in AI, particularly in the field known as pervasive computing, where software tries to automatically infer what people want, one of the people said.
Turi’s technology could feed into Apple’s Siri digital assistant and help define new ways computers interact with people, the person said.
“Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans,” the US firm said in a statement.
GeekWire earlier reported the acquisition.
Formerly known as Dato, Turi raised more than US$25 million from venture capital investors, including New Enterprise Associates and Madrona Venture Group, according to CrunchBase.
The Turi team will remain in Seattle, one of the people familiar with the situation said.
Apple has purchased multiple firms over the past couple of years that specialize in AI. The company has also begun to integrate these technologies into products such as its iPhone software and Siri.
Machine learning and AI help computers automatically understand images, videos and spoken words. The technologies also allow systems to take actions or make recommendations on such data. Apple has already begun to show the fruits of its AI investments via better keyword recognition by Siri across multiple product lines.
Apple is to release a new version of its photo-management program for iPhones and iPads that uses AI to recognize objects in photographs.
For example, a user will be able to search for “sushi” and photographs of the food will appear. Apple will also bring machine learning capabilities to its iMessage application by adding a feature this fall that translates words in texts into emoji icons.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group