Have you ever considered what real people actually do with the products of all of the innovation flowing from the IT industry? Sometimes, the answers are quite obvious. Shopify (NYSE:SHOP) essentially builds websites for mainly smaller businesses and facilitates credit card transactions. Silver Spring Networks (NYSE:SSNI) uses the technology of the IoT to facilitate the "intelligent city" and the "smart grid." Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) sells solutions that help companies manage both their sales people or agents and manage their customer interactions. Those and other solution sets are sold to rather obvious customers. But who actually buys and uses Big Data Appliances or Artificial Intelligence or advanced analytics. But in recent years, some financial services firms have tried to transform themselves from their roots as the providers of simple financial products used by consumers and business into what is known these days as Fintech. There are more than few such companies and perhaps at this point, there are companies with more aspirations as opposed to significant revenue. Equifax (NYSE:EFX) for many years has been known as one of the 3 major credit reporting agencies, the people who calculated your credit score using some arcane methodology. The business of selling credit scores to both business and consumers is hardly the most exciting in the world and has modest growth organic growth prospects in the US.

As we've mentioned, corporate giants in tech are competing to acquire private artificial intelligence startups, with Google emerging as the most active acquirer over the last 5 years. So far in 2016, there have already been over 20 acquisitions of AI startups, the most recent being Twitter's acquisition of visual-processing startup Magic Pony Technology. We analyzed M&A and IPO activity in this space from 2011. Our artificial intelligence category includes companies developing core AI algorithms as well as those applying AI solutions to specific industries like healthcare and cybersecurity. We used our database to analyze at what stage the AI companies exited.

Genpact (NYSE: G), a global leader in digitally-powered business process management and services, announces that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire PNMsoft, a Gartner Magic Quadrant-rated dynamic workflow, case management and work optimization solutions provider based around Tel Aviv, Israel. PNMsoft complements and easily integrates pre-existing systems of records that typically host manual process work, and will act as a core component in Genpact's digital portfolio whose roadmap comprises close to 100 digital solution components ("digital assets"). Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Closing is subject to satisfaction of certain customary conditions and expected in the third quarter. The transaction is not expected to be material to current year financial performance.

If you write marketing or advertising text for a living, you may want to get a second job skill. That's because software that writes text is here, and it is tackling a growing list of assignments. Several companies offer software that regularly churns out thousands of stories and reports based on structured data, like financial results. Ads that literally write themselves emerged last week, as IBM announced a new service based on its Watson supercomputer. A program called Quakebot has generated earthquake stories for the LA Times.

A pony is joining the flock. Twitter has acquired Magic Pony Technology, a London-based startup focused on machine learning and visual technology, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced Monday. The less than 2-year-old startup has been building and training neural networks to process and improve the visualization of video. The team has created a system to improve low-resolution video and has demonstrated it for live video game streaming, MIT Technology Review reported this year. That type of video conversion technology is key for Twitter as it focuses on live video.

Twitter has acquired Magic Pony, a London-based firm that has developed technology to improve video shot on smartphones and shared online. The company specializes in machine learning, the ability of computers to use built-in artificial intelligence to improve output. In the case of Magic Leap, that involves improved processing of video so that clips and live feeds look better shared on Twitter. Magic Pony had developed "novel machine learning techniques for visual processing," said Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey in a Twitter blog post announcing the acquisition Monday. "Machine learning is increasingly at the core of everything we build at Twitter. It's powering much of the work we're doing to make it easier to create, share, and discover the very best content so that every time you open Twitter you're immersed in the most relevant news, stories, and events for you."

Microsoft and Google have announced plans to expand their machine learning capabilities, through acquisition and new research offices respectively, reports Telecoms.com.

Microsoft Corp. has agreed to acquire Wand Labs, a startup whose messaging technology will help upgrade the software giant's efforts in chatbots. Financial terms of the deal weren't disclosed. Earlier this week, Microsoft MSFT, 1.41% agreed to a blockbuster acquisition of LinkedIn Corp. LNKD, 0.02% for 26.2 billion. Redwood City, Calif.-based Wand Labs will join the Bing engineering and platform group at Microsoft. The Bing group has been developing technology that fits into Microsoft's strategy surrounding what Chief Executive Satya Nadella calls "conversation as a platform."

If you write marketing or advertising text for a living, you may want to get a second job skill. That's because software that writes text is here, and it is tackling a growing list of assignments. Several companies offer software that regularly churns out thousands of stories and reports based on structured data, like financial results. Ads that literally write themselves emerged last week, as IBM announced a new service based on its Watson supercomputer. A program called Quakebot has generated earthquake stories for the LA Times.

Consider: Facebook snapped up shopping search engine TheFind this spring and virtual reality startups Pebbles Interfaces and Surreal Vision last year, building on the social networking leader's 2014 purchase of Oculus VR. E-commerce giant Amazon nabbed cloud computing startups Amiato, 2lemetry, Elemental Technologies and Italy's Nice, as well as chipmaker Annapurna Labs, which brought it new data center technology. Google and its parent Alphabet acquired at least 15 small companies last year, many with mobile technologies. By the 1980s, many were dismantled. Some tech pundits fret that Google, Amazon and Facebook could stray too far from their core businesses as well.