McDonald’s doubles down on tech with voice AI acquisition
By Sara Shaw • September 18, 2019
Following the $300 million acquisition of Dynamic Yield earlier this year, McDonald’s announced the acquisition of Apprente, a voice AI system focused on fast-food ordering.
As with Dynamic Yield’s decision engine, which switches up menu items based on what it thinks consumers want at any given time and location, Apprente’s ultimate goal is to increase the speed of any given transaction.
Unlike Dynamic Yield, which has remained a separate corporate entity wholly owned by McDonald’s, Apprente will come entirely in-house. The Apprente team will also become founding members of the newly formed McD Tech Labs, a Silicon Valley–based group that will work on better drive-throughs—or faster ones, at least—through technology.
It is still too early to know when deployment of the new technology will occur and how extensive it will be initially.