Apple buys AI startup Inductiv to improve Siri data

Apple has acquired Inductiv, an Ontario-based artificial intelligence startup that specializes in machine learning. The engineering team at Inductiv recently joined Apple to work on Siri, machine learning and data science.

Apple confirmed the acquisition to Bloomberg with its boilerplate statement, saying it “buys smaller technology companies from time to time and we generally do not discuss out purpose or plans.”

Inductiv developed a system that uses AI to automatically identify and correct errors in data. Having clean data is an important facet of machine learning, and with such process being automated it becomes time efficient as well.

The firm was co-founded by University of Waterloo professor Ihab Ilyas, University of Wisconsin-Madison assistant professor Theodoros Rekatsinas and Stanford University professor Christopher Ré. This is the second Apple acquisition for Ré, who previously co-founded Lattice Data AI company. Lattice Data was acquired by Apple in 2017. It’s unclear if Inductiv co-founders have joined Apple.

Apple has bought several AI and data companies in past years, with recent additions being Voysis and Dark Sky.