Apple Bought the Most AI Companies From 2016 to 2020

[MacRumors]

Apple is the leading buyer of companies in the global artificial intelligence space, according to data shared today by GlobalData. From 2016 to 2020, Apple acquired the highest number of AI companies, beating out Accenture, Google, Microsoft, and Facebook, all of whom also had a high number of AI acquisitions.

Over the course of the last several years, Apple has bought companies like Emotient, Turi, Glimpse, RealFace, Shazam, SensoMotoric, Silk Labs, Drive.ai, Laserlike, SpectralEdge, Voysis, XNOR.ai, and more, all with the aim of improving the AI and machine learning capabilities of its products and services.

Apple does not make all of its acquisitions public, so it's possible there are other artificial intelligence companies that Apple has purchased that have gone under the radar.

During Apple's February shareholders meeting, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that Apple had acquired close to 100 companies over the course of the last six years. "We're not afraid to look at acquisitions of any size," said Cook. "Focus is on small, innovative companies that complement our products and help push them forward."

According to GlobalData analyst Aurojyoti Bose, growing competition in the AI space has led to an acquisition spree.

"Apple, Google, Microsoft and Facebook collectively undertook 60 acquisitions in the AI tech space during 2016-2020 while Apple led the race with 25 acquisitions. AI has remained a key focus area for tech giants and growing competition to dominate the space has resulted in an acquisition spree among these companies."

Many of Apple's acquisitions have been aimed at improving Siri. Apple purchased Inductiv to improve Siri's data, while Voysis was acquired to improve Siri's understanding of natural language. PullString, meanwhile, makes it easier for iOS developers to use Siri features in apps.

"Apple has gone on a shopping spree in efforts to catch up with Google (Google Assistant) and Amazon (Alexa). Siri was first on the market, but it consistently ranks below the two in terms of "smartness", which is partly why Apple is far behind in smart speaker sales. Apple also want to make sure to keep its strong position within wearables. It is the dominant player in smartwatches. The acquisition of Xnor.ai last year was made to improve its on-edge processing capabilities, which has become important as it eliminates the need for data to be sent to the cloud, thereby improving data privacy."

Other acquisitions are aimed at future products, like Drive.ai, a self-driving startup that Apple purchased in 2019, presumably to further its autonomous car development project.

All of the above listed companies are also on an "AI talent-hiring spree" and collectively posted more than 14,000 jobs in the AI space in 2020.

Article Link: Apple Bought the Most AI Companies From 2016 to 2020

 

[ian87w]

And yet Siri still sucks...

So much for AI.
Or should I say, thank goodness. This means SkyNet is still far away from reality.

 

[ArPe]

Hope they are good. Many AI start ups are fake to get funding from VC (also known as vampire capitalists) firms. They say they have some kind of machine learning coffee machine that can tell how much caffeine you need if you stick your retina in the camera when you really just need a damn simple good cup of coffee.

Or they say they have some magic AI that can write your term paper but in reality it’s some human slave in Philippines who is being beaten with a stick to make him write faster.

 

[repoman016]

Is this Capitalism, Monopolization, or..BOTH! (insert duckhunt dog laughing gif)

 

[FlyGuyDEN]

Yet Siri is still a total ****ing **** show.

 

[Corsig]

So do we have any idea what has come from any of these purchases or was it mostly patents and staff

 

[DocMultimedia]

That sure is a lot of AI for having Siri say "I'm not sure what you are talking about."

 

[hagar]

I guess they want to avoid the competition from releasing even smarter assistants, because they sure are not using the technology for Siri.

 

[MikeyUnix]

Artificial intelligence is a contradiction in terms. Artificial it may be but intelligence? NO.

Algorithms and programming may provide useful diagnostics in certain functions...the medical sphere being one of them, but basically AI is a sequence of algorithms based on probability and will never really be a match for 'intelligence'. We can develop computers with massive memory, massive speed where these computers will no doubt assist us in all sorts of ways, but I doubt they will ever match human consciousness or intelligence.

Indeed much research suggests consciousness may be a quantum function in microtubules in the brain.

I'd prefer Apple to have bought chip foundry as AI still in my opinion in its infancy, and will require much more work.

If they spent all this money to assist Siri, then I'd want a refund!

 

[tofagerl]

And aaaaany day now they’ll start producing actual results…

 

[jerryk]

They bought more companies because Apple is not at its heart an AI-centric company. Google and Facebook are much more so. And each has a large staff of PhD-level researchers (Google Brain, Facebook AI Research - FAIR) working on the latest things and providing groundbreaking research back to the AI community. Most of the well-known AI/ML tools that Google and Facebook have built, such as TensorFlow and PyTorch, were first designed for internal use, and then made available publically.

 

[Jony Quest]

Artificial intelligence is a contradiction in terms. Artificial it may be but intelligence? NO.

Algorithms and programming may provide useful diagnostics in certain functions...the medical sphere being one of them, but basically AI is a sequence of algorithms based on probability and will never really be a match for 'intelligence'. We can develop computers with massive memory, massive speed where these computers will no doubt assist us in all sorts of ways, but I doubt they will ever match human consciousness or intelligence.

Indeed much research suggests consciousness may be a quantum function in microtubules in the brain.

I'd prefer Apple to have bought chip foundry as AI still in my opinion in its infancy, and will require much more work.

If they spent all this money to assist Siri, then I'd want a refund!

I can’t claim to know everything about AI… but at least I know enough to recognize a purely emotional response, devoid of any facts or accuracy whatsoever.

 

[Wolf Of Infinite Loop]

Nothing wrong with this at all. I don't blame Apple for these moves.

 

[mazz0]

And yet Siri still sucks...

I think that's probably because Apple just don't have the big data to compete with the likes of Google and Amazon. You could argue that's a consequence of their privacy focus (or that their privacy focus was concocted as a marketing exercise perhaps partly as an excuse for their weakness in AI, perhaps partly to try to limit their competitors’ access to the big data that gives them their advantage, if you're skeptically minded).

 

[mazz0]

Artificial intelligence is a contradiction in terms. Artificial it may be but intelligence? NO.

Algorithms and programming may provide useful diagnostics in certain functions...the medical sphere being one of them, but basically AI is a sequence of algorithms based on probability and will never really be a match for 'intelligence'. We can develop computers with massive memory, massive speed where these computers will no doubt assist us in all sorts of ways, but I doubt they will ever match human consciousness or intelligence.

Indeed much research suggests consciousness may be a quantum function in microtubules in the brain.

I'd prefer Apple to have bought chip foundry as AI still in my opinion in its infancy, and will require much more work.

If they spent all this money to assist Siri, then I'd want a refund!

None of that means AI is a contradiction in terms. It just means we don't have anything that can accurately be called AI yet (not even anything remotely close to it). I'm pretty confident we will one day though, unless you think there's something magical about our meatbag brains? Souls perhaps?

 

[Blackstick]

Me: Hey Siri, what time is it?

S: "I'm on it..."

 

[hot-gril]

Me: Hey Siri, what time is it?

S: "I'm on it..."

... Sorry, having trouble right now.

That's more about Siri somehow failing to connect a lot of the time. I always find its AI to be decent when it actually is able to process my request, but it's so unreliable. And some things shouldn't require a remote call.

 

[ipponrg]

Nothing wrong with this at all. I don't blame Apple for these moves.

No one blames Apple for these moves. The debate is what do they have to show for it? Not as much of a leap forward as you would hope!

 

[Razorpit]

My favorite recent Siri moment...

"Siri add milk to the grocery store list." (They same list we've been using for ~ 5 years at least.)
"I'm on it. To which list would you like me to add it to?"
"Grocery"
"To which list would you like me to add it to?"
"Grocery"
"To which list would you like me to add it to?"
"Gro-cer-y"
"To which list would you like me to add it to?"
"F off Siri."
(Wife laughs at me.)

Happening all the time now.

 

[GeoStructural]

I think that's probably because Apple just don't have the big data to compete with the likes of Google and Amazon. You could argue that's a consequence of their privacy focus (or that their privacy focus was concocted as marketing exercise perhaps partly as an excuse for their weakness in AI, perhaps partly try to limit their competitors access to the big data that gives them their advantage, if you're skeptically minded).

Apple has plenty of data (whether anonymized or not), lots of money, a large team and has purchased several companies. I do not think Siri's incompetence has anything to do with Apple's privacy-focused approach (which is a myth anyway), they are just not good at it. You can test it with simple tasks that have virtually nothing to do with individualization or privacy and Siri still struggles to complete.

 

[alpi123]

Excuse my dumb question, but what happens after Apple buys a small company? Do all of the employees of the company continue working but now Apple can use their tech, or they all leave and Apple's own staff gets to work in the company, now under Apple?

 

[AlumaMac]

My favorite recent Siri moment...

"Siri add milk to the grocery store list." (They same list we've been using for ~ 5 years at least.)
"I'm on it. To which list would you like me to add it to?"
"Grocery"
"To which list would you like me to add it to?"
"Grocery"
"To which list would you like me to add it to?"
"Gro-cer-y"
"To which list would you like me to add it to?"
"F off Siri."
(Wife laughs at me.)

Happening all the time now.

I hear ya..

I took a long solo road trip recently and thought I'd give Siri another chance with some fairly simple travel questions along my journey...no dice. 99% of our interactions ended with me just yelling at her to 'shut up'.
(I dropped her off at a Greyhound station in Tennessee and never looked back )

 

[Foggy82]

Excuse my dumb question, but what happens after Apple buys a small company? Do all of the employees of the company continue working but now Apple can use their tech, or they all leave and Apple's own staff gets to work in the company, now under Apple?

I guess depends case by case, but normally the employees are offered to stay and to become regular apple employees.
The existing structure will just report to someone inside apple, the former CEO will negotiate a decent position and salary as part of the acquisition... still leading their old team from a Director position, for example.if they want to stay, of course.

 

[Hori]

And have done absolutely nothing with them. Siri is still as dumb and useless as the day she came out.

 

[mazz0]

Apple has plenty of data (whether anonymized or not), lots of money, a large team and has purchased several companies. I do not think Siri's incompetence has anything to do with Apple's privacy-focused approach (which is a myth anyway), they are just not good at it. You can test it with simple tasks that have virtually nothing to do with individualization or privacy and Siri still struggles to complete.

Actually yeah, come to think of it they do get a lot wrong that is nothing to do with big data, more just due to poor quality control. For example Siri on HomePod won’t change its speaking volume, and at least one of my devices keeps responding as if it’s in a different room.