On February 7, 2020, Dessa, a Canadian computer applications company, announced its acquisition by Square, a mobile payment company based in California. The acquisition of Dessa will further improve Square's machine learning abilities as it looks to improve its products. Square plans to use machine learning to enhance products in areas like customer engagement, risk management, and more. The company also plans to continue hiring machine learning and AI talent to support both the Dessa team and its own product teams.
Square markets several software and hardware payment products and has expanded into small business services, while Dessa creates machine learning applications that address significant real-world challenges for all types of business.
Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP advised Dessa with a team consisting of Chad Bayne, Justin Dharamdial, Michael Grantmyre, Jeremy Lin, Sahil Chopra (Emerging and High Growth Companies), Dov Begun (Tax), Steven Dickie and Summer Danakas (Employment & Labour).