Twitter acquires Magic Pony in pursuit of machine learning

Global social networking platform, Twitter, has acquired London-based developer of machine learning and visual processing technology startup, Magic Pony. With this acquisition Twitter will be aiming to strengthen its live and video streaming capabilities via Pony’s machine learning platform which are delivered across its app. According to Twitter, the foundation of this acquisition is based on its other investments that it has made in machine learning with Madbits in July 2014 and Whetlab in June 2015. Twitter will be welcoming Magic Pony’s team on board to add value to its existing team which includes 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. Currently, Magic Pony’s team consists of 11 PhDs and alumni who are experts in machine learning, high-performance computing, and computational neuroscience. Bishop will be based out of Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco, and co-founder Zehan Wang and the other members will join Twitter’s growing London office. Jack Dorsey, Twitter CEO and Co-founder said, “Machine learning is increasingly at the core of everything we build at Twitter. Magic Pony’s machine learning technology will help us build strength into our deep learning teams with world-class talent, so Twitter can continue to 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.” The terms and conditions of the acquisition are still not disclosed yet, but according to Techcrunch, Twitter is paying $150 million in all for the deal.

How the deal is going to benefit Twitter

Magic Pony develops machine learning based methodologies for visual processing on web, desktop and mobiles, thus, Twitter is looking forward to boost the image enhancement area of its applications which is undoubtedly used by millions of people around the globe. Magic Pony’s technology creates algorithms which recognize pictures and delivers better-quality video density, which results in improved quality of videos and images and uses a smaller amount of data and are less broken. Therefore, Twitter will be making an extra effort to deliver upgraded services with this deal. Rob Bishop, Magic Pony CEO and Co-founder stated, “Our team has researched and developed state-of-the-art machine learning techniques for visual processing that can identify the features of imagery and use that information to process it in new ways. Joining forces with Twitter gives us the opportunity to bring the benefits of that research to hundreds of millions of people around the world, and allows Magic Pony to contribute to better quality viewing experiences on Twitter.” Twitter has gained a strong workforce with this acquisition and there are many zones where it has to work and implement better strategies. Albeit, it looks like with this deal, Larry (Twitter Logo) wants to fly higher to gain more virtual access.