Silverpeak advises in the sale of Magic Pony Technology to Twitter

Twitter has acquired Magic Pony Technology, a London-based technology company that has developed novel machine learning techniques for visual processing.

The acquisition of Magic Pony builds on other investments Twitter has made in machine learning, beginning with the acquisitions of Madbits in July 2014 and Whetlab in June 2015.

Magic Pony’s technology – based on research by the team to create algorithms that can understand the features of imagery – will be used to enhance Twitter’s strength in live and video.

The Silverpeak team, led by Pietro Strada, advised Octopus, who were the largest institutional investor in Magic Pony following an initial investment in the summer of 2015 and a further funding round earlier this year.

Terms were undisclosed.