Google acquires Bangalore based AI Startup Halli Labs

by Abhinav Mohapatra

Bangalore based startup, Halli Labs, that builds deep AI, neuro-linguistic programming and machine learning technology to solve ‘old-problems’ has been acquired by Google. The first official statement from Halli Labs was seen on its website and a blog on Medium stating that the company that is applying AI to enable people, will be joining Google’s Next Billion Users team “to help get more technology and information into more people’s hands around the world.” Google’s Next Billion Users team focuses on mobile strategies for the population in emerging markets facing issues of low internet and cellular connectivity, data usage, battery consumption, device compatibility, mobile transactions and monetization as well as localized content. Halli Labs was founded by Pankaj Gupta, who was the CTO of Stayzilla, the Indian version of Airbnb, which shut down its operations recently and was in the news because of its founder getting arrested. The AI Company was operating in stealth mode and released an official statement about itself, two months back on May 22. Caesar Sengupta who leads Google’s Next Billion User program announced the acquisition on Twitter, as a response to Gupta’s Tweet. He said “Looking forward to building some cool stuff together.”