Google has acquired Australian data science company Kaggle in an effort to improve its artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning capabilities.
Founded by Anthony Goldbloom in Melbourne, Kaggle uses the internet and social media to operate data analysis competitions for scientists worldwide, where the experts compete to improve machine learning algorithms.
According to Google Cloud AI and machine learning chief scientist Fei-Fei Li, Google has purchased Kaggle to “lower the barriers of entry to AI and make it available to the largest community of developers, users and enterprises”.
“Kaggle and Google will continue to support machine learning training and deployment services, while offering the community the ability to store and query large datasets,” she added.
Goldbloom has confirmed that Kaggle’s will retain its existing team, with Kaggle continuing as a distinct brand within Google Cloud.
“We will continue to grow our competitions and open data platforms, and we will remain open to all data scientists, companies, techniques and technologies,” he wrote in a blog post.
“Making Google Cloud technology available to our community will allow us to offer access to powerful infrastructure, scalable training and deployment services and the ability to store and query large data sets.”