Microsoft throws its weight behind Parisian AI startup factory Today, Microsoft announced that it'll be throwing its resources behind fledgling AI devs at a soon-to-launch startup space in Paris called Station F. Five initial companies will get a year's helping of Microsoft's "scientific, technological, and business expertise". By the end of the year, it hopes to have created an AI …
It shows Microsoft is getting smarter. Trying to make big acquisitions for billions to enter a market like they did with Aquantive and Nokia almost never works out. Apple has been smart with its acquisitions because they've always been small - pay $40 million for this little company, $300 for that little company. The biggest one in recent memory was Beats, for $3 billion, but rumor has it they were getting nowhere trying to negotiate streaming deals with music labels, so they bought Beats because it already had them.
Apple purchased companies that provided it with the CPU design expertise that is allowing their ARM cores to run circles around everyone else's, provided the technology behind Siri, and provided the capacitive touch screen knowledge that made the first iPhone possible. Maybe they've finally found something they can successfully copy from Apple.
I disagree, it will be no different to Microsoft Research in Cambridge. It tries to suck up the most promising UK graduates, who could have gone on to form the next Acorn or ARM, and lock them away playing with toys. They don't care that most of the projects will never bear fruit, but if by any chance they do come up with anything commercial, it will be Microsoft in the US that makes money out of it, not the UK.
"It tries to suck up the most promising UK graduates, who could have gone on to form the next Acorn or ARM, and lock them away playing with toys. "
Having been involved with a similar venture in another country, the participants will probably be brainwashed into thinking they can't do anything by themselves and need an investor first.
In other words, they end up spending more time doing presentations than inventing and proper research.
Even writing that last sentence was hard for me, because I too underwent the brainwashing.
Add in a healthy dose of Microsoft Certifications to take yet more time out of the invention and research loop.
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