Dailyhunt parent VerSe acquires AI firm Cognirel Technologies

VerSe Innovation, the parent company of news aggregator Dailyhunt, announced it has acquired India-based artificial intelligence solutions provider Cognirel Technologies.

The acquisition will help VerSe in building its digital capabilities on the platform, according to a statement. Cognirel founder Ram Prakash will head the company’s new AI Lab.

Virendra Gupta, founder and CEO of Dailyhunt / Photo credit: Dailyhunt

The AI Lab will pursue neuroscience-inspired reinforcement learning experiments to understand user taste profiles using non-intrusive and implicit behavioral signals, with the goal of boosting engagement and utility for users.

“The best of AI/machine learning approaches today can’t be readily applied to Indian languages without the availability of high-quality labeled data,” said Prakash. “We will employ hybrid approaches that combine deep learning-based cross-lingual transfer-learning techniques with classical computational linguistics models to alleviate the need for large labeled data.”

The lab will also focus on developing state-of-the-art models through computer vision to understand video content in terms of their visual, audio, semantic, and socio-linguistic aspects and enable better user recommendations and experiences on existing platforms.

Earlier this month, VerSe Innovation raised US$100 million in a funding round led by global investors Qatar Investment Authority and Glade Brook Capital Partners.