Apple reportedly acquires AI startup Turi in what may be an effort to boost Siri

Apple has planted a new flag in Seattle.

The California tech giant acquired Turi, an artificial intelligence and machine learning startup, GeekWire reported Friday.

Turi provides tools for app developers and data scientists, including a machine learning platform, sentiment analysis tools and other big data learning algorithms.

GeekWire predicted that such technologies could be useful in Apple's efforts to improve Siri. The personal assistant technology was only recently introduced into the Mac operating system.

Apple did not confirm the acquisition in a request for comment.

"Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans," an Apple spokesperson told Mashable.

Founder Carlos Guestrin declined to comment on the deal to GeekWire, which visited the company's offices in Seattle.

Started in 2009, the company began as an open-source project by Guestrin, who at the time was a professor at Carnegie Mellon. He later moved to the University of Washington and turned the project into a company.

The price reportedly was around $200 million, anonymous sources told GeekWire.

Turi had raised a total of $25.25 million in funding, according to Crunchbase. It had most recently closed a Series B of $18.5 million in January 2015.

Apple's acquisition of Turi would be its second in Seattle in recent years. In 2014, Apple acquired Union Bay Networks, a cloud networking startup. In the following year, Apple opened its first engineering office in Seattle.

Turi is Apple's sixth acquisition this year. During second-quarter earnings last week, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that the company, which has at least $200 billion in cash on hand, was interested in pursuing more mergers and acquisitions.