Thu. 01/16 - Apple Acquires Xnor.ai

Tech Brew Ride Home

Amalgamated Internets, LLC

Technology, News, Tech News

4.7 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 16 January 2020

⏱️ 19 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Apple has acquired a pretty interesting AI startup, the Chromium-based Edge browser is here, but there is trouble in Mozilla land, Fitbit is first to market with blood oxygen monitoring, the state of the app economy and ‘instant’ weather forecasts from Google. Sponsor: Metalab.co Links: Exclusive: Apple acquires Xnor.ai, edge AI spin-out from Paul Allen’s AI2, for price in $200M range (GeekWire) XNOR.ai frees AI from the prison of the supercomputer (TechCrunch) Microsoft launches Chromium Edge for Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10, and macOS (VentureBeat) Mozilla lays off 70 as it waits for new products to generate revenue (TechCrunch) Fitbit quietly enables blood oxygen tracking on its wearables (Engadget) Venture capital slowly seeps outside of Silicon Valley (Axios) App stores saw record 204 billion app downloads in 2013, consumer spend of $120 billion (TechCrunch) Google says new AI models allow for ‘nearly instantaneous’ weather forecasts (The Verge) Subscribe to the ad-free feed here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Tech Mem Ride Home for Thursday, January 16th, 2020. I'm Brian McCullough today.
0:10.0	Apple has acquired a pretty interesting AI startup. The chromium-based edge browser is here, but there's trouble in Mozilla land.
0:17.4	Fitbit is the first to market with blood oxygen monitoring, the state of the app economy, and instant weather forecasts from Google.
0:25.7	Here's what you missed today in the world of tech.
0:32.4	Various places are reporting that Apple has acquired the Seattle-based startup
0:36.0	Exnor AI, which develops low-powered edge-based AI image recognition tools.
0:43.2	The rumored purchase price was $200 million,
0:46.5	quoting Venturebeat.
0:47.8	The arrangement suggests that X-NOR's AI enabled image recognition tools could
0:52.1	well become standard features in future
0:53.9	iPhones and webcams. Exnor AI's acquisition marks a big win for the
0:58.4	Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence or AI2 created by the late Microsoft co-founder Paul
1:04.5	Allen to boost AI research. It was the second spin-out from AI2's startup
1:10.3	incubator following Kit. AI, which was acquired by the Chinese search engine powerhouse Baidu in 2017 for an
1:18.3	undisclosed sum, end quote.
1:20.9	But actually, let's come back to what Exnor AI actually does because it's interesting and I can certainly imagine what Apple might be able to do with this.
1:30.0	Basically, XNNor allows developers to use and drop AI-centric code and data libraries into their
1:38.7	apps.
1:39.7	You don't have to have any specific proficiency in AI to use their tools. The company motto is
1:46.5	AI everywhere for everyone. But the really exciting thing they do involves the edge. Their tools allow for machine learning and
1:54.8	image recognition that doesn't need to be supported by the cloud, that doesn't
1:58.9	need the computational power of a supercomputer behind it.
	...

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