First Perceptio at the end of 2015, then Turi just a few months ago and now Tuplejump, Apple seems to have some developed some kind of a sweet tooth for machine learning companies recently.
There were several rumors about Apple making another acquisition in the machine learning space for quite a while. Seems like they all held merit. While Apple hasn’t officially released a statement about the whole development, the company seems to be giving those who ask an answer that’s not quite no.
Apparently, while in converse with TechCrunch, Apple said,
Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans.
That’s as much a yes as you can get from the Cupertino giant for now.
Tuplejump is an India/US based machine learning company that has been active for a few years now. The company started off with a mission to simplify data management technologies in 2013. The official website of the firm has been shut down following the acquisition but a Wayback Machine capture of its about page has the company describing itself as:
A few years ago people realized that the volume of data that businesses generate was becoming unwieldy. A new set of technologies to handle this huge amounts of data cropped up. We were one of the early adopters of these ‘big-data’ technologies. Having helped Fortune 500 companies adopt these technologies we quickly realized how complicated they were and how much simpler they could get.
Thus started our quest to simplify data management technologies and make them extremely simple to use. We are building technology that is simple to use, scalable and will allow people to ask difficult questions on huge datasets.
Tuplejump’s most important project — and probably the neon light that attracted Apple — is a program called “FiloDB”. This open-source project applies machine learning concepts and analytics to massive amounts of complex data right as it is streamed in. And it seems as if this service is here to stay and shake things up. Apparently, the project has now been pushed to its own repository.
With the amount of data Apple probably crunches on a regular basis, developments in Machine Learning and data analysis are to the Cupertino giant’s advantages. Apart from developing them in house, the company also gives its abilities a boost from time to time by acquiring companies that have been bringing particular disruptions to the field. So yeah, the Tuplejump acquisition may well have already taken place.
However, we will only know for sure when Apple decides to make the information public.
