Salesforce quietly spent hundreds of millions of dollars to build a team of 175 data scientists

As every tech company, big and small, races to make its app artificially intelligent by adding machine learning – software that teaches itself how to respond to stuff it's never seen before – the talent war to hire data scientists is on. There simply are not enough people with the big-data/machine-learning background to fill all the thousands of jobs that companies have open. So Salesforce's CEO, Marc Benioff, explained how he got the people he needed to build its major new machine-learning product, Einstein. Salesforce will launch Einstein next month at its massive annual Dreamforce tech conference. "Salesforce Einstein is AI for everyone. It's going to democratize artificial intelligence. It's going to make every company and every employee smarter, faster and more productive. We are going to deliver the world's smartest [customer relationship management]. "And as you know, over the last few years we have acquired a number of AI companies -- incredible companies like RelateIQ, MetaMind, Implisit, PredictionIO, Tempo AI, and more with amazing, amazing people and technology.