Microsoft acquires AI startup to fuel artificial intelligence capabilities

SAN FRANCISCO: Microsoft announced on Wednesday that it has signed an agreement to acquire Bonsai, an artificial intelligence (AI) startup based in San Francisco, to boost its AI and machine learning capabilities. Microsoft said its acquisition of the small startup is "another major step forward in our vision to make it easier for developers and subject matter experts to build the "brains -- machine learning model for autonomous systems of all kinds." In its official blog, Microsoft said Bonsai has developed technology that will let experts with AI experience to work with autonomous systems, reports Xinhua news agency. "The company is building a general-purpose, deep reinforcement learning platform especially suited for enterprises leveraging industrial control systems such as robotics, energy, HVAC, manufacturing and autonomous systems in general," said the tech giant. Bonsai's platform combined with rich simulation tools and reinforcement learning work in Microsoft Research will compose with its Azure Machine Learning running on the Azure Cloud with GPUs and Brainwave, it added.