Apple on Wednesday said it has acquired Xnor.ai, an artificial intelligence software start-up. The company has previously used acquisitions to expand its bench of AI talent, as have other technology companies like Alphabet, Facebook and Microsoft. These companies have all taken steps to enhance their own products with AI and offer tools to outside software developers. "Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans," the company told CNBC in an email. GeekWire first reported the news earlier on Wednesday, saying that the deal was worth up about $200 million.

DWS Group (DWS) has acquired a minority stake of 24.9 percent in Arabesque AI Ltd. The UK-based company focuses on Artificial Intelligence (AI) to predict stock price developments via its proprietary AI engine, combining big data, machine learning, and high-performance computing. In addition, both companies have agreed on a strategic partnership to enhance the capabilities of the AI engine, and to develop sophisticated AI-based investment solutions. Both parties have agreed to maintain confidentiality on the price of the transaction and further financial details. Closing of the transaction has already taken place.

These are flush times for American private equity funds. Through November, they have raised more capital than any other fiscal year. But a good portion of that cash has not been put to use – yet. One reason is that many takeover targets have simply become too expensive, a dynamic reflected in the drop in deal activity for 2019. According to RSM Bloomberg, the median implied M&A transaction multiple from 2017 to 2019 was 12.2 times a firm's EBITDA, while from the preceding two-year period it was only 10.4.

A t the beginning of a new decade, these lines from the play Inherit the Wind seem as appropriate for the technology industry as they did for the debate over evolution taking place in the drama. The tech industry is faced with a tricky balancing act: continuing to drive innovative solutions while grappling with the side effects of those solutions in the global economy. The challenge itself is not unique--every industry deals with this tension as it becomes more mature--but the new variables here are the scale that tech is able to achieve and the evolutionary aspect of mixing digital and physical worlds. It's time for the industry to take the next step. There are tremendous benefits available through technology for both business and society, but there are major questions around safety, privacy, sustainability, and trust. The answers to these questions come from combining technical expertise with social awareness. By embracing responsibility for all the changes innovation can bring, the tech industry can be responsible for driving future progress. Learn how people are re-envisioning the functions, processes, and best practices for infrastructure, development, security, and data in their organizations. The IT channel is in flux. This report highlights where today's providers see opportunities and challenges, embrace new technologies, and react to new rivals. This research explores the relevance of technology to SMBs and the factors affecting perceptions, decisions, and investments in established and emerging technologies. Thanks to the vast influx of user-friendly technologies, it has become popular to say that every company is a tech company. But the ubiquity of technology does not necessarily change the underlying business model. While digital transformation is creating new avenues for growth, companies are finding that they cannot simply slap tech labels on their products and practices and automatically reap benefits. On one end of the spectrum, this takes the shape of larger companies going public and struggling with the realities of their industry.

Accenture said the acquisition will further equip its clients with capabilities to meet the growing demand for enterprise-scale AI, analytics and automation solutions. On Friday (13 December), professional services company Accenture announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Clarity Insights. Clarity Insights, a Chicago-based data consultancy with deep data science, AI and machine learning expertise, will bring its 350 employees to Accenture's Applied Intelligence business in North America. Founded in 2008, Clarity Insights focuses on serving clients' needs from end to end, aiming to transform business processes to embed and scale AI with deeper insights from data. Accenture did not disclose the terms of the deal.

Accenture (NYSE: ACN) announced on Friday it has completed its acquisition of consulting firm, Silveo. According to Accenture, Silveo is a French consulting company providing services and solutions for digital manufacturing and intelligent supply chains. Accenture also noted that Silveo brings a team of 50 professionals, who are joining Accenture Industry X.0. The latest acquisition comes just after Accenture announced it has agreed to acquire Clarity Insights, a U.S.-based data consultancy with deep data science, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) expertise. Accenture claims that Clarity Insights is a leading provider of data science and AI/ML engineering capabilities for large enterprises, and a strategic partner to clients across a range of industries, particularly healthcare, financial services, and insurance.

Above the Trend Line: your industry rumor central is a recurring feature of insideBIGDATA. In this column, we present a variety of short time-critical news items grouped by category such as M&A activity, people movements, funding news, industry partnerships, customer wins, rumors and general scuttlebutt floating around the big data, data science and machine learning industries including behind-the-scenes anecdotes and curious buzz. Our intent is to provide you a one-stop source of late-breaking news to help you keep abreast of this fast-paced ecosystem. We're working hard on your behalf with our extensive vendor network to give you all the latest happenings. Be sure to Tweet Above the Trend Line articles using the hashtag: #abovethetrendline.

Accenture said the acquisition will further equip its clients with capabilities to meet the growing demand for enterprise-scale AI, analytics and automation solutions. On Friday (13 December), professional services company Accenture announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Clarity Insights. Clarity Insights, a Chicago-based data consultancy with deep data science, AI and machine learning expertise, will bring its 350 employees to Accenture's Applied Intelligence business in North America. Founded in 2008, Clarity Insights focuses on serving clients' needs from end to end, aiming to transform business processes to embed and scale AI with deeper insights from data. Accenture, which is headquartered in Dublin, did not disclose the terms of the deal.

"I do plan to bring back my father," Ray Kurzweil says. He is standing in the anemic light of a storage unit, his frame dwarfed by towers of cardboard boxes and oblong plastic bins. He is in his early sixties, but something about the light or his posture, his paunch protruding over his beltline, makes him seem older. Kurzweil is now a director of engineering at Google, but this documentary was filmed in 2009, back when it was still possible to regard him as a lone visionary with eccentric ideas about the future. The boxes in the storage unit contain the remnants of his father's life: photographs, letters, newspaper clippings, and financial documents. For decades, he has been compiling these artifacts and storing them in this sepulcher he maintains near his house in Newton, Massachusetts. He takes out a notebook filled with his father's handwriting and shows it to the camera. His father passed away in 1970, but Kurzweil believes that, one day, artificial intelligence will be able to use the memorabilia, along with DNA samples, to resurrect him. "People do live on in our memories, and in the creative works they leave behind," he muses, "so we can gather up all those vibrations and bring them back, I believe." Technology, Kurzweil has conceded, is still a long way from bringing back the dead. His only hope of seeing his father resurrected is to live to see the Singularity -- the moment when computing power reaches an "intelligence explosion." At this point, according to transhumanists such as Kurzweil, people who are merged with this technology will undergo a radical transformation. They will become posthuman: immortal, limitless, changed beyond recognition. Kurzweil predicts this will happen by the year 2045. Unlike his father, he, along with those of us who are lucky enough to survive into the middle of this century, will achieve immortality without ever tasting death.

In a clear signal of its ambitions in the AI chip market, Intel this morning announced that it has acquired Habana Labs, an Israel-based developer of programmable AI and machine learning accelerators for cloud datacenters. The deal is worth approximately $2 billion, and Intel says it will strengthen its AI strategy as Habana begins sampling its proprietary silicon to customers. Habana -- which raised $75 million in venture capital last November -- will remain an independent business unit and continue to be led by its current management team. It will report to Intel's data platforms group. Board chair Avigdor Willenz will serve as senior adviser to the business unit, as well as to Intel. "This acquisition advances our AI strategy, which is to provide customers with solutions to fit every performance need -- from the intelligent edge to the datacenter," said Navin Shenoy, executive vice president and general manager of the data platforms group at Intel.