Apple Plans To Acquire Another Machine Learning Startup, And It’s India-Based

Looking at Apple’s latest shopping list, there no denying the fact that Tim Cook has big plans for the artificial intelligence industry. What seems like a shopping spree, only months after buying Turi, and also recollecting that Apple bought Perceptio at the end of 2015, rumors of the firm buying another machine learning startup have resurfaced.

This time it’s India/US based machine learning startup called Tuplejump.

Though the representative from Apple neither denied nor acknowledged the buzz going around, but they didn’t either shy away from giving their standard response when they do acquire a company:

“Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans.”

Coming back to the startup, Tuplejump was founded by Rohit Rai, Satyaprakash Buddhavarapu and Deepak Alur. The Hyderabad-based firm helps companies to store, process and visualise big data. According to media reports, apple was particularly interested in “FiloDB”, an open source project that Tuplejump was building to efficiently apply machine learning concepts and analytics to massive amounts of complex data right as it streamed in.

Taking the liberty to consider Apple’s answer as a yes, Tuplejump will be Apple’s step further into understanding artificial intelligence. The industry has been catching attention in the past both from investors and consumers. This is not just because the industry has huge scope but also because humans have finally accepted that robotics or machines would be much better when dealing with emotions.

Jokes apart, AI is seeing it’s re-birth in the recent time with big firms like Facebook, Google, Microsoft and many more venturing into this field.

This also marks Apple’s another India foray, which is nothing less than delightful news. Standing firm with 56% growth amid a global slowdown in smart phone sales and also a slump in the growth of its flagship iPhone in key markets such as the US and China, India is proving to be the opportunity Tim Cook once said it was. And it is because of this Cook made some major announcements on his visit to India in May this year. This includes a mobile app development centre in Bengaluru and a development office in Hyderabad that would focus on development of Maps for Apple products, including iPhone®, iPad®, Mac® and Apple Watch®.