According to IDC, global spending on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cognitive systems will reach $19 billion by 2018. This is an increase by approximately 54% over the total amount consumed in 2017. Mergers and acquisitions are constantly taking place. We all know that AI is creating new opportunities in every sector be it healthcare or travel. So, companies all around the world are enchasing on such opportunities to offer much-improved products or services to consumers through mergers and acquisitions.

Artificial intelligence is quickly becoming an integral part of every tech company's strategy, so it's no surprise that big firms are ramping up their acquisition of AI startups. M&A activity has already seen a fivefold increase in the number of AI startup acquisitions -- from 22 in 2013 to 115 in 2017. While the race is far from over, Google and Apple have acquired the most AI startups since 2012. With close to 14 acquisitions, Google is currently leading the charge to buy AI startups. The company's most recent acquisition involves the conversational commerce platform Banter, which helps businesses connect with their customers over popular messaging platforms like Facebook Messenger, Twitter, and Snapchat.

In fact, of late a number of start-ups that Google, Facebook and other technologies companies have bought have been purchased not for the products or services that these start-ups were making. Instead, they were bought by the tech giants because of the people who started these start-ups. One prime example is Halli Labs, a Bengaluru-based start-up that was bought by Google for an undisclosed amount just four months after it was started. Halli Labs, when it was bought, arguably had no proper product out and was barely known outside the start-up circle. However, reportedly bought it because it wanted the people who started it.

Google has snapped up yet another artificial intelligence (AI) startup. This time, it is Bengaluru-based Halli Labs, which claims to apply AI and machine learning (ML) techniques to old problems and domains. Halli Labs shared the news in a Medium post earlier today. "We will be joining Google's Next Billion Users team to help get more technology and information into more people's hands around the world," it noted in its post. Halli Labs was founded by Pankaj Gupta, who was earlier the CTO at the now-defunct Stayzilla.

Today, we are thrilled to share the news that the Halli Labs team is joining Google. As we wrote in our introductory blog post, Halli Labs was founded with the goal of applying modern AI and ML techniques to old problems and domains -- in order to help technology enable people to do whatever it is that they want to do, easier and better. Well, what better place than Google to help us achieve this goal. We will be joining Google's Next Billion Users team to help get more technology and information into more people's hands around the world. We couldn't be more excited!

Google's recent acquisition of Halli Labs, an artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) startup started by an IIT-Delhi alumni Pankaj Gupta, has fuelled Bengaluru's ambition of becoming the hub of AI and ML product startups. Halli, which means a village in Kannada, was born five months ago in Bengaluru for developing solutions to traditional problems using AI, ML, deep learning and natural language processing technologies. Commenting on the development, Google's vice-president for product management Ceasar Sengupta tweeted, "Welcome Pankaj and the team at Halli Labs to Google. The company says it is focused on building deep learning and ML systems to address'old problems'. Gupta said the company will be joining Google's Next Billion Users team. "Halli Labs will help get more technology and information into more people's hands around the world," he said. Gupta is interested in the areas of personalisation, applied machine learning, AI, user growth and engagement, search, recommendation and discovery products, distributed systems, graph infrastructure and algorithms. He has published over 30 papers and filed more than 20 patent applications. Google and its parent company Alphabet are vigorously persuing acqui-hiring in AI startups along with other technology giants Baidu, Samsung, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook and Snap. According to a startup founder working in the similar space, AI and ML are still in their initial stages, just like how smartphone and mobile apps were a decade ago. "All startup founders are very much aware of its importance.

Google's recent acquisition of Halli Labs, an artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) startup started by an IIT-Delhi alumni Pankaj Gupta, has fuelled Bengaluru's ambition of becoming the hub of AI and ML product startups. Halli, which means a village in Kannada, was born five months ago in Bengaluru for developing solutions to traditional problems using AI, ML, deep learning and natural language processing technologies. The company says it is focused on building deep learning and ML systems to address'old problems'. Besides IBM's Watson, which the company describes as a "cognitive" system that uses artificial intelligence (AI) technologies mostly in healthcare and education and IPsoft's Amelia, Microsoft Corporation's AI and Research Group, Amazon AI Services, Facebook AI Research (FAIR) and OpenAI, a non-profit lab partly funded by Elon Musk of Tesla are doing enormous work around in this area.

Google's recent acquisition of Halli Labs, an artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) startup started by an IIT-Delhi alumni Pankaj Gupta, has fuelled Bengaluru's ambition of becoming the hub of AI and ML product startups. Halli, which means a village in Kannada, was born five months ago in Bengaluru for developing solutions to traditional problems using AI, ML, deep learning and natural language processing technologies. Commenting on the development, Google's vice-president for product management Ceasar Sengupta tweeted, "Welcome Pankaj and the team at Halli Labs to Google. The company says it is focused on building deep learning and ML systems to address'old problems'. Gupta said the company will be joining Google's Next Billion Users team. "Halli Labs will help get more technology and information into more people's hands around the world," he said. Gupta is interested in the areas of personalisation, applied machine learning, AI, user growth and engagement, search, recommendation and discovery products, distributed systems, graph infrastructure and algorithms. He has published over 30 papers and filed more than 20 patent applications. Google and its parent company Alphabet are vigorously persuing acqui-hiring in AI startups along with other technology giants Baidu, Samsung, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook and Snap. According to a startup founder working in the similar space, AI and ML are still in their initial stages, just like how smartphone and mobile apps were a decade ago. "All startup founders are very much aware of its importance.

Today it was made public that Google has acquired Halli Labs, a very young (its first public appearance was on May 22 of this year) startup based out of Bengaluru, India, that was focused on building deep learning and machine learning systems to address what it describes as "old problems." The company says it will be joining Google's Next Billion Users team "to help get more technology and information into more people's hands around the world." Halli announced the news itself earlier today in a short post on Medium, and Caesar Sengupta, a product management VP at Google, also confirmed the acquisition with a Tweet. Welcome @Pankaj and the team at @halli_labs to Google. Google has now also confirmed the acquisition with a short statement it provided to TechCrunch.

Recently Google made its first Indian acquisition with AI startup Halli Labs. Halli Labs is a Bengaluru-based company that started its journey barely four months ago. The startup focuses on solutions based on artificial intelligence and machine learning. Halli (meaning village in Kannada) Labs announced, both on its website and blog site Medium, that "its team was joining Google." It didn't divulge further details.