By end of 2019, will there be a >=$500M AI startup acquisition?

Resolution

The question will resolve positive if:

there is an acquisition after April 9 and before Jan 1st, 2020, of a company whose core product/mission involves AI (e.g. by actively doing research into automation, machine learning or predictive analytics), over and above simply being a tech startup with a data science team; where
the acquiring entity gains either A) Majority equity or B) Governing control, and
there is credible information to pin-down the price to >=$500M with >=80% confidence.

The resolution date will be set to one week before the acquirer or the acquired company officially announce the deal (so we don’t require e.g. full due diligence processes to be completed in 2019).

Examples of acquisitions sufficient for positive resolution:

Ford’s $1B acquisition of self-driving car startup Argo AI
Google’s $500M acquisition of DeepMind
Palo Alto Networks $560M acquisition of cyber-security automation startup Demisto

Examples of acquisitions not sufficient for positive resolution:

Amazon’s $1B acquisition of online pharmacy PillPack
Uber’s $?? acquisition of Geometric Intelligence (I’m not able to put >80% on the valuation being high enough)
Myriad Genetics’ $375M Genetics acquisition of genetic testing firm Counsyl (wouldn’t have counted even if amount was higher, given that data science doesn’t seem sufficiently core to Counsyl’s approach)

Data

Infographic of acquisitions between 2012 and 2017, sorted by acquiring company.

Detailed, real-time list of acquisitions (it’s a somewhat useful list, though note that their categorization of “AI” is much broader than required for positive resolution).

Categories: Other sociological, economic, geopolitical questions

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