Technology giant Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) has bought a small Canadian start-up company to help it improve machine-learning and artificial intelligence (AI).
Apple has purchased Waterloo, Ontario-based company Inductiv Inc., adding to more than a dozen AI-related acquisitions in recent years. Inductiv develops technology that uses AI to automate the task of identifying and correcting errors in data. Having clean data is important for machine learning, a popular and powerful type of artificial intelligence that helps software improve with less human intervention.
The engineering team from Inductiv joined Apple in recent weeks to work on Siri, machine learning and data science. The Inductiv acquisition is part of Apple’s broader machine-learning strategy. Apple has been upgrading the underlying technology that goes into the Siri digital assistant and other AI-powered products.
Inductiv was co-founded by machine-learning professors from Stanford University, the University of Waterloo and the University of Wisconsin. Apple has bought several other AI and data companies in recent years, including Xnor.ai, Tuplejump, Laserlike, Turi, Lattice Data and Perceptio.