GlobalData announced that the US tech giants dominated in the M&A (mergers and acquisition) deal-making landscape of the 2016-2020 in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). During this period, four of the top five buyers of global AI companies were US technology companies. Not surprisingly, Apple ranked first with total purchases of 25 AI companies.
The top five AI company buyers are Apple, Accenture, Google, Microsoft and Facebook in order. Among them, in addition to Apple’s 25, Accenture (an Irish company) bought 17 AI companies and Google bought 14. At last, Microsoft bought 12 firms and Facebook bought 9 firms.
Aurojyoti Bose, chief business foundation analyst at GlobalData, said that AI has become a battleground for technology giants. So the result of competition has led to large-scale acquisitions.
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“Apple, Google, Microsoft and Facebook collectively undertook 60 acquisitions in the AI tech space during 2016–2020 while Apple led the race with 25 acquisitions. AI has remained a key focus area for tech giants and growing competition to dominate the space has resulted in an acquisition spree among these companies.”
Why The US Tech Firms Are Acquiring So Many AI Companies?
Another analyst, Nicklas Nilsson, proves that the US is a leader in the AI field. Related mergers and acquisitions mean that these companies have clear goals for the development of AI applications. For example, many of Apple’s acquisitions are aimed at improving Siri or creating new features on its iPhones.
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According to Nilsson’s analysis, although Apple’s Siri is the first digital voice assistant on the market, its intelligence capabilities lag behind the Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa. This is one of the reasons why Apple’s smart speakers are not as good as Google and Amazon.
The five largest buyers in the world not only acquire AI companies, they also recruit AI talents aggressively. These five industry players have posted more than 14,000 job vacancies in the AI field in 2020 alone.
