Continuing with an acquisition spree in the last five years, tech giant Apple has acquired more artificial intelligence companies than any other of its competitors as per research from GlobalData.
The acquisition race dominated by US tech giants oversaw the Cupertino, California-based company acquiring 25 AI startups during the five years from 2016 to 2020.
Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Facebook were on top of 60 acquisitions in the AI tech space while Accenture acquired 17 companies during the period.
According to Nicklas Nilsson, Senior Analyst on the Thematic Research Team at GlobalData, Apple’s acquisitions were majorly aimed at enhancing Siri, the virtual assistant on Apple devices, or creating new features on its iPhones.
The company’s acquisition spree highlights Apple’s endeavors to catch up with Alphabet’s Google Assistant and Amazon’s Alexa. While the company lags in smart speaker sales, it stays on the top of the charts in the smartwatches segment.
Apple CEO Tim Cook was quoted saying in February about the company’s consistency in terms of acquiring a company every month and a total of over 100 acquisitions in the last six years.
The acquisition of the self-driving startup Drive.ai was executed in June 2019 while the Montreal-based contactless mobile payment startup Mobeewave was acquired in August last year.
The company has also been quietly working on pushing into virtual reality and augmented space for years. It also confirmed the acquisition of virtual reality startups NextVR and Spaces last year.
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