Block acquired Dessa, a transaction announced in February 2020.
Dessa operates in Square (Machine Learning / AI), is based in Canada (Toronto). Square acquired Dessa, a Toronto-based company building machine learning applications aimed at real-world business challenges. The Dessa team of engineers was brought in to bolster Square's machine learning and artificial intelligence capabilities, with the team continuing to operate from Toronto. Dessa was well known for its work on deepfake detection, which it had open-sourced.
The acquisition boosted Square's machine learning abilities to improve products in areas such as customer engagement and risk management, added deepfake-detection expertise relevant to fraud and security, and expanded Square's engineering presence in Toronto's ML hub.
Advisory firms were not disclosed for this transaction.