One other Kelowna tech startup has been bought by an business juggernaut.
Microsoft introduced Friday that it bought Two Hat, a Kelowna-based content material moderation platform that makes use of AI to categorise and filter messages, usernames, photographs and movies in actual time to create safer on-line communities.
“For any on-line neighborhood to thrive, content material moderation is a essential funding to make sure optimistic person experiences and preserve engagement over time,” the Microsoft assertion in regards to the acquisition reads.
“Microsoft and Two Hat share a imaginative and prescient for utilizing developments moderately know-how to nurture and defend various, world on-line communities.”
They don’t listing the value the corporate was purchased for or what the affect might be for the close to 100 staff. It does say that whereas their curiosity might be in enhancing the protection in Xbox shared areas, Two Hat will be capable of maintain its earlier contracts.
Chris Priebe, the corporate’s govt chairman, began Two Hat in 2012 with the intent of enhancing the net sphere so individuals might share with out the worry of abuse or harassment. Since then, the corporate has taken off, now dealing with a trillion on-line interactions a 12 months, and Microsoft, significantly Xbox, has been a shopper for years.
“We now have partnered with Xbox and the Microsoft crew for a number of years and share the fervour and drive to make significant change within the development of on-line civility and citizenship,” Priebe and CEO Steve Parkis mentioned in a joint assertion.
“We’re dedicated to making sure security, inclusion and on-line well being and wellness are at all times on the forefront of our work and thru becoming a member of Microsoft, we are able to present the best focus of expertise, assets and perception essential to additional this imaginative and prescient…. That is just the start. Thanks to everybody who has believed in us, supported us, pushed us, and impressed us.”
And if the title of the Two Hat founder sounds acquainted, it’s as a result of the same story occurred not too way back.
Lance Priebe is Chris Priebe’s brother. He, together with Lane Merrifield and Dave Krysko, was one of many founders of Membership Penguin, the net gaming community for teenagers that offered to Walt Disney Firm for an estimated $350 million in 2009.
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