The American computer group Microsoft continues to strengthen in artificial intelligence with the acquisition announced Friday of the startup Montreal Maluuba, which specialized on the understanding of the language by the machines. The financial terms of the transaction are not disclosed.
Maluuba, based in Montreal, has "one of the most impressive research laboratories in the world" in terms of work on how machines can learn to understand natural language, says Harry Shum, who oversees the 'Artificial Intelligence and Microsoft Research, in a message announcing the acquisition on the group's website.
Maluuba's know-how "will help us to advance our strategy to democratize artificial intelligence and make it accessible and useful for everyone - consumers, businesses and developers," he adds.
Engineers and researchers from Maluuba will join the Microsoft Artificial Intelligence and Research division, which hopes to accelerate the development of software that allows computers to read, write and hold conversations in a natural way, like humans.
Microsoft announced at the same time that it would join a recognized artificial intelligence expert, the director of the Montreal Learning Algorithms Institute, Yoshua Bengio, advising Maluuba so far and now do the same with Microsoft.
Artificial intelligence is currently attracting considerable interest in the technology sector, which sees it as one of the most promising niches in the future. This is one of the axes of the strategy led by Satya Nadella, the general manager of Microsoft, to relaunch the group after its failure to take the turn of the mobile.
