The tech oligopoly — Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft – have been working on cutting edge technologies (ref – Top 10 technology trends to watch). They have been investing in their own R&D while also supplementing their research by acquiring promising startups.

In a latest M&A in this space, Onward, a San Francisco-based artificial intelligence chatbot startup announced that it was being acquired by Google. Onward offers an AI-powered chatbot, called Agent Q that is automated to answer simple questions by grabbing answers from a database.  Onward confirmed this in its blog post:

We’re excited to announce that Onward is joining Google!

Today, we’re announcing the next step on that journey — Onward is joining the Google family! With Google, we’ll be able to expand the reach of the technologies that power Onward. These core technologies are what got us excited in the first place, and we are excited to bring them to Google.

According to Crunchbase, Onward has less than 10 employees. It is expected that the Onward team will merge with Goole’s AI research. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. but Crunchbase noted the company has had two funding rounds and has raised a total of $120 million to date.