Apple acquires Xnor.ai for $200 million
2020-01-20Xnor.ai, which was spun off in 2017 from the nonprofit Allen Institute for AI (AI2) has been acquired by Apple. for about $200 million.
Apple that made the appointment for about $200 million confirmed the reports with its standard statement for this sort of quiet acquisition: “Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans.”
Xnor.ai began as a process for making machine learning algorithms highly efficient so that they could run on even the lowest tier of hardware out there, things like embedded electronics in security cameras that use only a modicum of power. Using Xnor’s algorithms they could accomplish tasks like object recognition, which in other circumstances might require a powerful processor or connection to the cloud.
CEO Ali Farhadi and his founding team put the company together at AI2 and spun it out just before the organization formally launched its incubator program. It raised $2.7M in early 2017 and $12M in 2018; both rounds led by Seattle’s Madrona Venture Group, and has steadily grown its local operations and areas of business.
The company will likely move to Apple’s Seattle offices. AI2 confirmed that Farhadi is no longer working there, but he will retain his faculty position at the University of Washington.
An acquisition by Apple makes perfect sense when one thinks of how that company has been directing its efforts towards edge computing. With a chip dedicated to executing machine learning workflows in a variety of situations, Apple clearly intends for its devices to operate independent of the cloud for such tasks as facial recognition, natural language processing, and augmented reality.
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