Unity hires Uber’s machine learning head to add to its AI prowess

Just after a year as Uber’s head of machine learning, Dr. Danny Lange is now joining game engine startup Unity to head its AI and machine learning divisions.

Before Uber, he had also worked at Amazon — on Amazon’s internal Machine Learning platform (EML) and launched Amazon Machine Learning for AWS — and Microsoft.

“Danny’s deep, technical background and expertise in Machine Learning align perfectly with the needs of our developers in the rapidly changing world of games and AR / VR,” said John Riccitiello, CEO of Unity Technologies, in a statement. “We look forward to Danny creating innovative technologies our developers can use to help them optimize engagement and revenue for their products.”

With Unity making deeper forays into AR/VR for developing the next generation of its games, Dr Lange will surely add to company’s prowess.

The game engine startup is witnessing high growths presently. The company raised $181 million at a rumored $1.5 billion of valuation in its last fund-raising round. Also, its game engine is currently being used by over 5.5 million developers across the world.

The company is behind 34 percent of the top mobile games and is now increasingly focusing its efforts towards new emerging platforms.