- Financial services company Square announced it is buying Toronto-based company Dessa
Financial services company Square recently announced it was buying Toronto-based company Dessa (previously known as DeepLearni.ng). The terms of the deal were undisclosed. Square and Dessa said that they will be partnering to “build machine learning applications that allow people to do more with their money than ever before, and in general, stretch the limits of what’s possible with AI.”
The Dessa team is going to continue running its office in Toronto. There will be no immediate changes to the company. Dessa co-founders Eric Kin-Ho Lee, Ragavan Thurairatnam, Vincent F Wong, and Stephen Piron will continue running the company.
“We had three big motivations when we started Dessa. The first was to take what was possible with AI to its limits. We started the company in 2016, a heady and historic time for deep learning. The technology was new to industry but starting to build momentum, and inspiration abounded. We made the most of riding on this wave. Joining Square allows us to continue to evolve what’s possible with applied machine learning, and double down on our commitment to doing so,” wrote Piron. “Our second motivation was to use AI to change financial services for the better. At first, we built deep learning for big banks, hoping to make people’s experience using financial services easier and more efficient. The work we did made an impact, but we knew it had its limits. From day one, Square has been a champion of economic empowerment for people who might otherwise be left behind by traditional financial institutions. We’re excited to build new tools and products with machine learning at Square that will make finance easier for customers around the world.”
Prior to the acquisition, Dessa raised $9 million in funding from mutual funds managed by Fidelity Investments Canada.
