IBM acquires AlchemyAPI for Watson
IBM has acquired AlchemyAPI for an undisclosed amount, a platform used by more than 40,000 developers of cognitive computing applications. The acquisition will expand the reach of IBM’s Watson natural language processing solutions.
IBM will integrate AlchemyAPI’s deep learning technology into the core Watson platform, augmenting Watson's ability to quickly identify hierarchies and understand relationships within large volume data sets. The technology is expected to enhance Watson's ability to ingest, train and learn the “long-tail” of various data domains – including general business and target industries, as well as address the need to manage constantly evolving ontologies.
In addition, the acquisition will greatly expand the number and types of scalable cognitive computing APIs available to IBM clients, developers, partners and other members of the Watson ecosystem. This includes language analysis APIs to address new types of text and visual recognition, and the ability to automatically detect, label and extract important details from image data.
Founded in 2005 and headquartered in Denver, AlchemyAPI’s deep learning platform enables clients, partners, developers and other third-parties to build cognitive-infused applications with advanced data analysis capabilities such as taxonomy categorization, entity and keyword extraction, sentiment analysis and web page cleaning. The company’s software platform processes billions of API calls per month across 36 countries and in eight different languages: English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish.
"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 powered by Watson," said Mike Rhodin, senior vice president, IBM Watson.
“Our ability to draw upon both internal and external sources of innovation, from IBM Research to acquisitions like AlchemyAPI, remain central to our strategy of bringing Watson to new markets, industries and regions.”
Delivered through the cloud, IBM Watson analyzes high volumes of data, understands complex questions posed in natural language, and proposes evidence-based answers. Watson continuously learns, gaining in value and knowledge over time, from previous interactions.
IBM is delivering new Watson services and APIs through the Watson Zone on Bluemix, the company’s digital innovation platform that enables developers to rapidly build, deploy and manage apps across any combination of public, private and hybrid cloud. Thousands of developers, entrepreneurs, data hobbyists, students and others have already built more than 7,000 apps powered by Watson to date.
AlchemyAPI’s capabilities, including new language analysis and visual recognition services, will be delivered through Bluemix, and enable developers to quickly build a range of business applications. New and existing users can sign up for a free trial and access the AlchemyAPI services today on www.bluemix.net.