Significant AI and Data Science Acquisitions and Mergers by Google in Recent Years

As we breathe in the environment of vital economic changes, mergers and acquisitions have turned out to be a basic business tool embraced by a number of companies. Especially in the fast-paced digital transformation, tech-savvy companies are opting for this tool for growth, survival, and innovation. Following the merger traces, tech giant Google has established many successful relations with business firms in order to attain technology supremacy above all. With the emergence of artificial intelligence and data science across multiple sectors and industries, we can see that Google has also leveled up its game in the past few years to propel the success boundaries.

Here we present you with significant AI and Data Science mergers by Google in the past few years.

Kaggle

Google acquired Kaggle (a platform which hosts data science and ML competitions) officially on March 8, 2017, without any public disclosure to financial details. Google said that the latter would join its cloud which would utilize the skills of Kaggle team in ML training and deployment services. The collaboration will also work on dataset storage and query technologies. As asserted by Kaggle CEO Anthony Goldbloom, the company continues to be a distinct brand under Google's umbrella.

Halli Labs

Google acquired Indian Bengaluru-based startup Halli Labs for an undisclosed amount in July 2017. Latter is the Indian deep learning and ML systems development company. With the goal of applying AI/ML technologies to old and prevailing problems, Halli Labs helped Google efficiently process real-world language by the virtue of NLP. The company is considered an ideal fit for Google's progressive business strategy.

AIMatter

In order to excel in the field of computer vision, Google has acquired a Belarus-founded startup AIMatter which has built a neural network-based AI platform and SDK to identify and process images quickly on mobile phones. The company has also developed a photo and video editing app which has served as a proof-of-concept of the technology known as Fabby.

Onward

The tech giant, in October 2018, had acquired Onward, a small startup that builds tools for businesses seeking automation. Onwards co-founder Remi Cossart and Pramod Thammaiah, CTO Aaron Podolny along with other key employees joined Google. The terms and clauses of the deal remained undisclosed to date. Onward is committed to providing businesses with AI-centred chat solution using NLP and ML technology to get customers what they need while using the resources of automation.

Alooma

Early this year in February, Google acquired Alooma which allows organizations to combine their entire data sources into services like Google's BigQuery, Redshift, Snowflake, and Azure. The latter offers to handle data mediums and manage it for customers. Alooma also helps in migration to the cloud, cleaning up the data and later using it for AI/ML learning use cases.

Looker

In most recent time, Google acquired BI platform, Looker for $2.6 billion all-cash deal. The reason for this hefty deal is to broaden Google's portfolio in business intelligence and analytics portfolio along with data warehousing capabilities. The acquisition also aims at boosting up enterprise-focused approach and reach out to more customers.

Looker will aid Google in extending smart analytics platform and define its business metrics.