Apple Inc. has acquired an Ontario, Canada-based machine learning company called Inductiv Inc. according to a report from Bloomberg.

Although Apple didn’t officially confirm or deny the acquisition, it did say that it “buys smaller technology companies from time to time and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans,” its standard nondenial response.

Inductiv developed technology that uses artificial intelligence to automate the task of identifying and correcting errors in data. That functionality is said to be important in machine learning because clean data helps not only in processing but also in making predictions.

Background on the company is difficult to come by, since neither a website nor venture capital records exist for it. Its website was never recorded by the Internet Archive either. According to Bloomberg, the company was co-founded by machine-learning professors from Stanford University, the University of Waterloo and the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

The main records for the company can be found on LinkedIn. Co-founder Ihab Ilyas, a professor at the University of Waterloo, lists himself as chief executive officer from February 2019 to now. Other searches for the company in LinkedIn uncovered Josh McGrath, who according to his profile was a “team member” at Inductiv from April 2019 to March before changing his position to machine learning engineer at Apple in April. Ryan Clancy lists himself as a software developer at Inductiv from September to April before changing his profile to software engineer at Apple, also in April. Suffice to say, the company’s acquisition by Apple is confirmed by the Inductiv LinkedIn profiles.

What’s also not clear is whether Apple acquired the company for its technology or whether it was a talent acquisition. Bloomberg simply noted that the company’s engineers have joined Apple in recent weeks to work on Siri, machine learning and data science.

Whatever the motivation, the acquisition isn’t Apple’s first in the AI and ML area. Previous acquisitions include Xnor.ai Inc. for $200 million in January, Laserlike Inc.,Turi Inc. in 2016 and Perceptio in 2015.

Apple’s most recent acquisition prior to Inductiv was virtual reality startup NextVR May 14 for a reported $100 million.

Image: Mike MacKenzie/Flickr