International Business Machines purchased AlchemyAPI to enhance the deep learning capabilities of Watson. IBM did not disclose the financial terms of the transaction.
AlchemyAPI is a leading provider of scalable computing application program interface (API) services and deep learning technology.
Its deep learnings platform allows clients, developers, partners, and other third-parties to build cognitive-infused applications with advanced data analysis capabilities. Some of these capabilities include taxonomy categorization, entity and keyword extraction, sentiment analysis, and web page cleaning.
AlchemAPI’s software platform processes billions of API calls every month across 36 countries and in eight different languages (English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish).
Acquisition will accelerate IBM’s cognitive computing applications
According to IBM acquiring AlchemyAPI will help accelerate its development of next generation cognitive computing applications. It will also increase the Watson ecosystem significantly. The tech giant welcomes the 40,000 developers on the AlchemyAPI platform to the IBM Watson developer community.
IBM plans to integrate Alchem API’s deep learning technology into the core Watson platform. The integration will strengthen Watson’s ability to identify hierarchies faster and understand relationships within large volume data sets.
It will also improve Watson’s ability to ingest, train, and learn the “long tail” of various data domains including general business and target industries.
IBM added that the number and types of its scalable cognitive computing APIs offerings would increase.
Executive comments
In a statement, Mike Rhodin, senior vice president of IBM Watson said, “IBM continues to invest in Watson‘s core technology and cloud development platform, amplifying a robust Watson ecosystem where third party organizations are creating new businesses and solutions…”
Rhodin added the IBM said bringing Watson to new markets, industries, and regions remain a central part of its strategy with its ability to draw upon internal and external sources of innovation from research to acquisitions.
On the other hand, Elliot Turner, founder and CEO of AlchemyAPI said his company’s mission is to democratize deep learning, artificial intelligence for real-time analysis of unstructured data.
The company also aims to give developers access to these capabilities to innovate. He said, “As part of IBM’s Watson unit, we have an infinite opportunity to further that goal.”
