HYDERABAD: Apple quietly acquired a little-known Hyderabad-based startup a few months ago for an undisclosed amount and while little is known about what Tuplejump does, the word is that this is part of the Cupertino-based giant's exploration into artificial intelligence.Known in the trade as an acqui-hire, nearly all of Tuplejump's 16 employees are in the process of becoming Apple staffers. A back-of-the-envelope calculation by an expert put the valuation at about $20 million (Rs 133 crore)."When there is a talent hire, the cost of hiring is usually calculated based on the last few years' salary," the expert said. "So, for a 16-member team, I think it would probably come up to around $4 million a year — making this deal for something around $20 million (including for possible IP evaluation)."Tuplejump is Apple's first acquisition in India. Including this, the iPhone-maker has bought three artificial intelligence companies this year, the others being Turi and Emotient.Apple's AI-based assistant Siri is facing increasing competition from similar services out of Google, Amazon and Microsoft "Apple has been acquiring machine-learning companies. Increasingly, services and products are becoming AI-based — bots, speech recognition, tagging of user's photos, finding faces," said Viral Shah, co-creator of open source language Julia and co-author of ‘Rebooting India' along with Nandan Nilekani Infosys cofounder."If Apple is building a self-driving car that will also have machine-learning and AI in it, it is only natural for them to acquire talent around machine-learning and AI," Shah said.Apple did not give any details on the Tuplejump acquisition, only saying, "Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans." TechCrunch first reported the news. Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook had visited Hyderabad in May, shortly after the Tuplejump acquisition, to inaugurate his company's first development centre in the country.During his first official visit to India, Cook also announced plans to set up a design and development startup accelerator in Bengaluru and open retail outlets in the country.While iPhone purchases have increased in India, globally Apple is struggling with slowing sales.Tuplejump was founded in 2013 by Rohit Rai, Satyaprakash Buddhavarapu and Deepak Alur. While Rai and Buddhavarapu relocated to Apple's office in Silicon Valley in May, Alur joined Premji Invest-backed Anaplan as engineering head. Rai and Buddhavarapu were equal partners in Tuplejump as of March 31, 2015.The bootstrapped company reported a profit of about Rs 80,000 in 2014-15 on revenue of about Rs 70 lakh, according the company's annual report. Experts anticipate more acquisitions of machine-learning and AI startups."At least four-five technology giants, who are looking to acquire startups in the field of AI and machinelearning, have approached us," said Thiyagarajan M, head of M&A at software product think-tank iSpirt. "Suddenly, this area has developed a lot of acquisitiveness."