Twitter acquires Magic Pony, expands capabilities in machine learning

Twitter has acquired AI startup Magic Pony, a London-based startup for reportedly $150 million. This machine learning investment is aimed at strengthening its image sharing, videos and live video capabilities. Magic Pony has built machine learning techniques for visual processing and this acquisition follows acquisitions of Madbits in July 2014 and Whetlab in June 2015. Twitter will be using Magic Pony’s technology to enhance its live and video and also images, and broaden the creative horizon for Twitter. The Magic Pony team consists of eleven PhDs with expertise across computer vision, machine learning, high-performance computing, and computational neuroscience. They will be joining Twitter Cortex, which is a team of engineers, data scientists, and machine learning researchers building a product in which people can easily find new experiences to share and participate in, writes Twitter in a blogpost. “We are continuing to build strength into our deep learning teams with world-class talent to help Twitter be the best place to see what’s happening and why it matters, first. We value deep learning research to help make our world better,” Twitter further adds. In the past, we’ve seen Google acquire DeepMind , yet another AI startup based in London. DeepMind uses general-purpose learning algorithms for applications such as simulations, e-commerce and games, according to the company’s website.