Post acquiring Maluuba, Microsoft to expand R&D and invest $7M

A couple of days back American tech company, Microsoft announced the intent to acquire Montreal-based AI firm Maluuba. According to the company, Maluuba’s expertise in deep learning and reinforcement learning for question-answering and decision-making systems will help the company advance its strategy to democratize AI and to make it accessible and valuable to everyone — consumers, businesses and developers. For further expansion in Montral, Microsoft and the Canadian Government have announced plans to double the size of Microsoft’s new AI research and development organization (Maluuba) in the coming two years. The company has also announced an investment of $7 million ($6 million to University of Montreal and $1 million to McGill University) for AI research over a five-year period. According to the tech giant, the rationale behind the expansion and investment is to engage the faculty, student and the broader tech community in Montreal, which is becoming a global hub for AI research and innovation. Janet Kennedy, President, Microsoft Canada, said, “Given these newly-formed connections in Montreal, and our recent investment in Element AI, a Montreal-based incubator comprised of academic researchers from across North America, Microsoft is well positioned to advance our strategy to democratize AI, bringing powerful new insights and capabilities to every person and organization on the planet.”