Deals And Dreams

Last week saw another big acquisition by Cisco, as well as a venture-capital injection for RedLock, a cloud security startup that announced a 100-percent channel strategy.

$125 million

Price that Cisco said it will pay to acquire advanced artificial intelligence startup MindMeld, which will be the networking giant's second acquisition this month. San Francisco-based MindMeld spent three years developing its MindMeld platform before launching it in 2014. The vendor says the platform makes it possible for companies to create intelligent conversational interfaces for any app or device. Cisco said the acquisition will power new conversational interfaces for its collaboration products, revolutionizing how users will interact with its technology, improving ease of use, and enabling new cognitive capabilities. The deal is expected to close in Cisco's fiscal fourth quarter.