Microsoft Acquires Maluuba AI Startup

Microsoft has completed acquisition of Maluuba, an AI startup.

A great way for a tech giant to quickly improve their research and development capabilities in a certain field of artificial intelligence is to acquire smaller companies who already have a cohesive team of specialists. This is the case with Microsoft’s latest acquisition of Maluuba, an AI startup.

Maluuba is Canadian company based in Montreal and was founded by graduates from the University of Waterloo like Sam Pasupalak and Kaheer Suleman. The Ai startup focused its efforts natural language processing as a way to develop the overall capabilities of artificial intelligence and eventually build computers capable of thinking like people.

More specifically, Maluuba used deep learning and reinforcement learning algorithms to increase the effectiveness and proficiency of AI system which can answer various questions and even make their own decisions. Microsoft has already completed the acquisition process of the company as it hopes to help them with making AI system increasingly accessible and more useful to the public.

Thanks to the focus on natural language processing of the AI startup, Microsoft can improve the capacity of their computer systems to understand what they are reading, as well as comprehend the natural dialog between people. The system can gradually become better at several tasks like common sense reasoning, memory, finding the information which they lack, and more.

Maluuba issued a statement regarding the Microsoft acquisition, emphasizing the importance of AI systems and the daunting task of improving them. As such, it recognized that they are able to make progress only by tapping into the large resources of a partner such as Microsoft. Furthermore, the announcement regarding the acquisition, both companies recognized that their goals align and their resources would be best served if they work together, with Microsoft providing necessary funding as well as access to a large user base, adequate infrastructure, and support.

Maluuba was able to impress industry experts with the reveal of a virtual assistant capable of handling a wide range of domains, as it was able to overcome some of other similar systems from companies like Facebook and Google. This broader domain focus can lead to a new breakthrough in AI research, more so than focusing on narrow domains.

Image source: Wikimedia

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Roxanne Briean

I am a geek, a gamer and a writer. I have always been fascinated with the online community. At the moment I work as a full-time writer and study interior design. When I'm not scouring the net in search of interesting new gadgets and software I spend my time in MOBAs or drawing.