Amazon is buying the startup Tamu AI for $5 billion.
The deal closes Amazon’s acquisition of the startup in January 2020.
The deal is expected to close in the first quarter of 2021.
Amazon said it would continue to operate the Tamu brand.
Tamu, based in Japan, has worked on artificial intelligence for over five years and is known for developing a tool for artificial intelligence called the “tamusum” to assist robots in learning how to interact with humans.
Amazon is also developing artificial- intelligence applications for people, including the company’s Echo speaker and Echo line of smart speakers.
Tamu will continue to focus on helping AI experts build artificial-intelligent products.
The company was founded in 2005 by Masato Kato, who was the CEO of artificial-language platform Airmix.
Kato left in 2015 to join Google.
Tamusum is based on a deep learning technique called deep learning neural networks that was developed at the University of Chicago.
The technology was recently adopted by Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft, according to the company.
Amazon also announced that its Alexa voice assistant would be based on the TAMU AI technology.
