Listen to this story

The year 2023 witnessed a slew of acquisitions of AI startups by big tech companies, signalling their clear focus on augmenting technological capabilities and expanding market reach. The aim was to integrate AI technologies into existing products and services and stay relevant in the competitive landscape.

It also indicates that AI is not just an add-on but a core component of future technological advancements driving companies to invest heavily in startups. 

Here is a list of the top AI acquisitions of this year.

Neeva

Snowflake, a cloud data management company, acquired Neeva, a search startup founded by two former Google employees, for approximately $150 million in May 2023. Neeva initially focused on both consumer and enterprise search solutions, but recently shifted its focus solely to enterprise search. 

The acquisition by Snowflake follows Neeva’s decision to discontinue its consumer search operations and concentrate on enterprise applications, particularly leveraging generative AI in search technology. Snowflake’s co-founder, Benoit Dageville, the company co-founder and president of products, said, “Neeva’s ability to leverage generative AI in search was one of things that drew Snowflake to the search startup.”

Myst AI

Early in January this year, Snowflake acquired Myst AI, a startup providing an AI development platform for the energy industry. Myst AI’s platform focuses on developing and testing AI models for business forecasting, specialising in time-series data. 

The startup, having raised $8 million, is used by several companies in the energy sector. Snowflake acquired Myst AI primarily to enhance its capabilities in artificial intelligence and data science, specifically in the area of business forecasting.

The price of the acquisition was undisclosed. 

LeapYear Technologies

On February 10, 2023, Snowflake acquired LeapYear Technologies. This move added LeapYear’s differential privacy technology to Snowflake’s offerings, enhancing their data clean room capabilities. Leap Year’s technology, now integrated into Snowflake’s Secure Data Sharing product, allows secure data analysis while ensuring privacy. 

The acquisition also expanded Snowflake’s market reach, as it can now help organisations analyse a broader range of sensitive data. This strategic acquisition strengthens Snowflake’s position in the data privacy and analysis market.

The acquisition was priced at $62 million. 

Ponder

Last month, Snowflake acquired Ponder, focusing on integrating Ponder’s technology that allows open-source Python libraries to work on Snowflake’s Data Cloud. 

This acquisition upgraded Snowflake’s support for Python-based data science and machine learning. Ponder’s technology is now part of Snowflake’s Snowpark framework, enabling efficient Python data processing in the cloud. The Ponder team has joined Snowflake to continue their work, making Snowflake a more versatile platform for data science. 

The acquisition price was not disclosed.

Fig

Amazon Web Services acquired Fig.io, an asset acquisition in August, this year. This technology was integrated into AWS Cloud9, enhancing its cloud-based IDE. 

The acquisition also broadened Amazon’s appeal to the developer community and strengthened its position in the cloud computing market. The terms of the acquisition, including the price, were undisclosed.

Snackable AI

In May, Amazon acquired Snackable AI, a company specialising in audio content discovery, to enhance its podcast offerings on Amazon Music. Snackable AI’s technology, based on natural language processing (NLP), analyses podcast transcripts to identify key topics, themes, and sentiments. 

Snackable AI, which had raised $3.1 million in funding before the acquisition, saw its technology and team integrated into Amazon Music and its product management organisation. This integration is expected to refine podcast recommendations for Amazon Music users and assist in developing new podcast-related features. The acquisition aims to provide more tailored podcast experiences, potentially introducing features like podcast summaries and topic-based playlists, leading to increased user engagement.

The financial terms of the acquisition remain undisclosed.

Nod.ai

AMD acquired Nod.ai, an open-source AI software company on October 11, 2023. This acquisition aims to expand AMD’s AI software capabilities and enhance its AI ecosystem. Nod.ai is known for its contributions to open-source AI compiler software, crucial for optimising AI models for specific hardware, thereby improving AI performance.

The acquisition allows AMD to strengthen its AI software expertise and optimise AI models for its hardware products, including the Instinct, Ryzen, EPYC, and Varsal families. This integration is expected to provide AI developers with more efficient tools, enhancing the development and deployment of AI applications on AMD hardware.

This strategic acquisition of Nod.ai enhances AMD’s position in the AI market and is seen as a significant step towards improving its AI ecosystem and developer offerings. The financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Mipsology

AMD acquired Mipsology, a French AI software company specialising in AI inference optimization for embedded devices on September 1, 2023. This aims to enhance AMD’s AI inference software capabilities and expand its AI ecosystem, particularly in applications like IoT, edge computing, and autonomous vehicles.

This strategic move allows AMD to optimise AI inference for low-power hardware, thus improving its AI offerings and providing more efficient tools for AI developers. The integration of Mipsology’s technology and expertise is expected to bolster AMD’s AI inference capabilities and expand its reach in the AI market, particularly in edge computing.

The financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Google Acquired Photomath

Google acquired Photomath, a Croatian company known for its mobile app that solves maths problems, in June this year. Photomath’s technology, which includes photo recognition and machine learning algorithms, allows the app to analyse and solve maths problems from photos.

Google’s acquisition of Photomath aims to integrate this technology into Google’s existing educational products and services, such as Google Search and Google Classroom. It is expected to provide students with more personalised and effective maths learning tools, thereby improving their learning experience.

For educators, it means enhanced access to resources that can support diverse learning styles and needs. Local media suggested that the acquisition price may have been anywhere from €220M to €500M.

Apple Acquired WaveOne

In March 2023, Apple acquired WaveOne, a startup from California specialising in AI-based video compression algorithms. WaveOne’s technology is designed to compress videos using artificial intelligence and maintaining quality while reducing bandwidth needs.

This is particularly relevant for streaming services like Apple TV+ and Netflix, and can also minimise the storage size of videos on devices such as iPhones and iPads. Apple’s integration of WaveOne’s technology is expected to improve video quality and decrease the bandwidth and storage requirements for its streaming services and devices.

The financial terms of the acquisition of WaveOne were not disclosed.

Nvidia acquired OmniML

Nvidia acquired OmniML in February 2023, a startup specialising in machine-learning model compression for edge devices. OmniML’s technology focuses on automating the compression of machine-learning models, maintaining their accuracy while reducing size and complexity. This is crucial for edge devices, which often have limited computational resources and memory.

Nvidia’s acquisition of OmniML aims to improve the performance and efficiency of machine learning models on these devices and provide developers with advanced tools for deploying AI applications in edge environments. The implications of this acquisition for edge AI include accelerated adoption of AI on edge devices, improved performance and efficiency of machine learning models, and expansion of Nvidia’s AI ecosystem. 

The financial terms of Nvidia’s acquisition of OmniML were not disclosed.

Adobe Acquired Rephrase AI

Last week, Adobe acquired Rephrase AI, a startup from Bengaluru specialising in AI-powered video creation tools. Rephrase AI’s platform leverages natural language processing to interpret text inputs and generate video content, including narration, music, and visuals. This technology aims to simplify professional-quality video creation. 

The acquisition is expected to increase the adoption of AI-powered video creation tools, enhance creativity and efficiency in video editing, and potentially expand the market for Adobe’s video editing software like Premiere Pro, After Effects, and Audition. 

The financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Airbnb acquired GamePlanner AI

In August 2023, Airbnb acquired GamePlanner.AI, a San Francisco-based travel planning startup. AI’s AI-powered technology, which provides personalised activity recommendations to travellers.

This acquisition is intended to bolster Airbnb’s capabilities in offering personalised travel experiences and expand its reach in the activities and experiences sector. It is expected to promote wider use of AI in travel planning and attract more users to Airbnb’s platform.

Airbnb’s strategic move in acquiring GamePlanner.AI, for $200 million according to CNBC, strengthens its position as an all-in-one travel planning service.

Databricks acquired MosaicML

Databricks acquired MosaicML in July 2023. MosaicML developed MPT (Mosaic Probabilistic Transformer) LLMs, known for their efficiency in training on large datasets and their state-of-the-art performance in natural language processing tasks.

Databricks’ acquisition of MosaicML aims to expand its AI platform by integrating these advanced LLMs, thereby enabling customers to build, train, and deploy generative AI models more effectively on Databricks’ Unified Data Platform. This move is expected to increase the adoption and innovation in the field of generative AI, and make these technologies more accessible to a broader range of users.

The strategic acquisition of MosaicML by Databricks signifies a major investment in advancing generative AI technologies, with the acquisition valued at $1.3 billion.