Dive Brief:
- Twitter announced in a blog post it is acquiring machine learning company Magic Pony, a company with a focus on visual processing.
- Magic Pony uses neural networks and machine learning to provide greater amounts of data for visuals.
- Terms of the deal were not disclosed but two sources told TechCrunch that Twitter paid $150 million all-in for the company.
Dive Insight:
Machine learning is a major focus for both Google and Facebook already. The technology is also the entire basis of IBM’s Watson, which has been put to marketing use after IBM’s purchase of The Weather Company’s digital assets last October.
Now, Twitter is making moves in the space, with the possibility that this could play into their video strategy. Twitter recently rolled out a live video button to the platform after the launch of Facebook Live.
"Twitter has gone after video in a big way and buying Magic Pony demonstrates how important video is for them," Suranga Chandratillake, a partner at Balderton, one of the venture capital companies that invested in Magic Pony, told TechCrunch. "That’s the key thing.”
But Chandratillake added that the acquisition also hints at Twitter's ambitions in virtual reality and augmented reality. Virtual reality and augmented reality are two areas Google and Facebook are exploring with their own machine learning efforts.
“Magic Pony was already working on a pretty substantial VR and AR strategy before they were acquired and have some very interesting tech in that area,” he said.
The move comes after other investments in machine learning by Twitter, including the acquisitions of Madbits in July 2014 and Whetlab in June 2015. Twitter already has a machine learning team called Twitter Cortex that's filled out with engineers, data scientists and researchers tasked with building a product where people can easily find new experiences to share and participate in.