Twitter has bought London-based machine learning startup Magic Pony Technology for a reported $150 million (£102 million), according to reports from TechCrunch.
In a blog post announcing the acquisition, Jack Dorsey said it "builds on other investments we've made in machine learning".
"Magic Pony's team will be joining Twitter Cortex, a team of engineers, data scientists, and machine learning researchers dedicated to building a product in which people can easily find new experiences to share and participate in," he wrote.
Magic Pony use neural networks to examine images and understand the "features of imagery", and Twitter is likely to use it to enhance its live video offerings.
"Machine learning is increasingly at the core of everything we build at Twitter," added Dorsey. "We are continuing to build strength into our deep learning teams with world-class talent to help Twitter be the best place to see what’s happening and why it matters, first."
"We value deep learning research to help make our world better, and we will keep doing our part to share our work and learnings with the community."
Twitter has invested in a number of new projects recently, including a investment of up to $70 million in SoundCloud earlier this month, according to Re/Code. It also acquired two other machine learning companies – Madbits in July 2014 and Whetlab in June 2015.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
