Ericsson plans to have a team of around 300 highly qualified engineers in GAIA by end of 2019, of which half will be employed for India operations
Ericsson has reportedly acquired workforce of Niche AI for its Bengaluru-based artificial intelligence centre and is looking for more buyouts to build a team of 150 high-tech engineers for India operations this year.
NicheAI is an early stage Artificial Intelligence (AI) start-up that designs accurate and computationally light algorithms to solve computer vision problems.
The Swedish telecom gear maker did not disclose financial details of the acquisition, but it says, “the size of the acquisition itself is small.”
“Niche AI ‘acquihire’ was in single digits in terms of the size of the workforce,” said Sanjeev Tyagi, Head of Ericsson R&D Bengaluru.
Acquiring talents for GAIA
Ericsson started its India wing of Global Artificial Intelligence Accelerator (GAIA) last year to develop open-source solutions to modernise telecom network, using AI and machine learning.
Ericsson has plans to have a team of around 300 highly qualified engineers in GAIA by end of 2019 of which half are expected to be located in India.
Tyagi said that as 5G technology will start spreading, there will be a huge proliferation of the internet of things devices and a large number of different elements in the network, which can be efficiently managed only through AI and ML-like technologies and for which GAIA is developing solutions.
Founded two years back, NicheAI was initially accelerated in IIIT-Hyderabad’s AVISHKAR deep tech accelerator program. It is currently based out of T-Hub.
The startup has been assisting insurance companies analyse claims images and videos to disburse insurance claims. NicheAI’s core offering is also being used by some companies to develop AI systems using local hardware and giving real time insights from videos and images.
Source: PTI, The News Minute
