Did Apple Just Add To Its Stable Of AI Startups With Turi Acquisition?

Apple Inc. AAPL has bought machine learning and artificial intelligence startup Turi, according to a report on GeekWire.

GeekWire, citing sources to the deal, said the consideration was at around $200 million, marking a huge outcome for the original investors and early shareholders.

The acquisition of Turi would benefit Apple's push to artificial intelligence with its personal assistant Siri and related technologies. The report said Turi's team is expected to remain in the Seattle region and continue to grow as Apple builds out further expertise in data science, artificial intelligence and machine learning.

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GeekWire noted that Turi's products include the Turi Machine Learning Platform, GraphLab Create, Turi Distributed and Turi Predictive Services. They are deployed in recommendation engines, fraud detection, predicting customer churn, sentiment analysis and customer segmentation.

Notably, it is not the first time that Apple has spent its cash on artificial intelligence/machine learning startups. Apple had already bought Perceptio and VocalIQ as part of its push in to this promising area.

Shares of Apple closed Friday's regular trading session at $107.48; at time of writing, Apple was flat on the day at $107.57.

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