Apple has acquired the machine learning startup Turi, according to GeekWire.
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A source close to the deal confirmed the acquisition Friday. That being said, it certainly sounds like Apple is interested.
It added that the deal reflected Apple’s efforts to increase its presence in the Seattle region, where it has been building an engineering presence for the past two years.
Apple confirmed the acquisition with the standard purchase statement it gives to media outlets: “Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our goal or plans”. The source said these tech giants were particularly interested in a field known as pervasive computing, where the software tries to automatically infer what a user wants.
These solutions – as well as Turi’s talent – are probably headed straight for Apple’s virtual assistant, Siri, in addition to its numerous storefronts, like the App Store and Apple Music. As usual with an Apple acquisition, it’s picking up a small company whose products will likely make their way into the fabric of other Apple services.
Turi offers tools that are meant to let developers easily scale machine learning applications. Last fall, it bought Perceptio and VocalIQ.
Turi, which previously was also called GraphLab, did not immediately return a request for comment.
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Turi was founded by professor Carlos Guestrin at Carnegie Mellon in 2009 as an open source project but was later spun off into a company in 2012 after Guestrin and his wife moved to the University of Washington to continue their studies.
