To improve its AI capabilities, Apple acquires Turi, a Seattle-based machine-learning startup for a reported $200 million.
Turi was formerly known as Dato and GraphLab. The startup has a number of products that are designed to help developers in creating machine-learning and AI solutions capable of scaling. The products that came from them - which include the Turi Machine Learning Platform, GraphLab Create, Turi Distributed, and Turi Predictive Services - are largely designed to help large and small organizations make better sense of data. They were actively involved in creating clickthrough predictors, chum predictors, sentiment analysis, fraud detection systems, recommendation engines and other AI-related projects.
Before winning a series of funding, the company began as an open-source project at Carnegie Mellon in 2009 under the guidance of Carlos Guestrin, a University of Washington professor who founded the company.
The acquisition is a big investment from Apple into AI and machine-learning, and also a way to increase its presence in the Seattle region.
