Apple buys its first Indian startup

Photo credit: iphonedigital.

Apple has bought Tuplejump, a Hyderabad-based startup that uses artificial intelligence to understand and manage big data, according to reports from TechCrunch and Bloomberg. The acquisition happened in June, Bloomberg said.

Tuplejump was founded by Rohit Rai, Satyaprakash Buddhavarapu, and Deepak Alur. According to Rohit and Satyaprakash’s LinkedIn profiles, they moved to work at Apple in May. Deepak left to join Anaplan in April. Tuplejump’s site has been taken down.

“Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans,” Colin Johnson, an Apple spokesman, said in a statement to TechCrunch.

If the reports are true, this will be Apple’s third acquisition this year. Last month, it bought machine-learning startup Turi for US$200 million. In January, it bought Emotient for an undisclosed amount. Emotient uses artificial intelligence to analyze facial expressions to figure out emotions. It’s also yet another addition to the company’s foray into artificial intelligence technology. In October 2015, Apple acquired Perceptio, which makes it possible to run artifical intelligence image-classification programs on phones without needing too much customer data.

Tuplejump will be the first Indian startup that Apple has bought.

The southern city of Hyderabad has had some of its other startups get attention. AppVirality, a startup that develops toolkits to help mobile developers figure out how to grow their apps, has been backed by Rajan Anandan, managing director of Google India and Southeast Asia.

Source: TechCrunch

See: AI is the recurring theme in Microsoft Accelerator’s latest batch of startups