Microsoft vs. Google: Hot start to 2018 for investments in machine learning and precision medicine startups

It's no secret that Google and Microsoft are archrivals in the consumer and enterprise IT space. Think: search engines, productivity apps and email, infrastructure-as-a-service in the cloud, even news, tech-related and otherwise. Indeed, hospital executives following their moves throughout 2017 are also keenly aware that both titans turned their scopes toward healthcare more than ever before. What's more, they've been doing so in ways that only companies with R&D and M&A pockets billions of dollars deep can dream about. Google, for its part, plunked down $500 million to buy DeepMind in 2014 followed by Moodstocks in 2016, to name two.