Artificial Intelligence M&A: The New Gold Rush

While many people are still in shock after discovering that there is actually no human controlling the steering wheel in autonomous cars, tech companies, including Google, IBM, Yahoo, Intel and Apple, have found themselves in the middle of a gold rush for artificial intelligence (AI) companies. According to recent research by CB Insights, around 140 AI companies have been acquired since 2011, and the number of AI startup M&As has increased more than seven fold between 2011 and 2016. In fact, the race to invest in AI has been characterized as "the latest Silicon Valley arms race."

AI is a broad term that covers several technical methods and is based on the assumption that a machine can be built to "stimulate" human intelligence. In a nutshell, it predicts the likely future by reviewing the past through advanced statistical analysis. As pointed out by Ajay Agrawal, a professor at the Rotman School of Management, even though some current applications are quite stunning,