IBM Watson, the data analytics company, will be among the first to get the next-generation machine learning engine from a big player in the field, according to an investor presentation.
“This will be IBM Watson on steroids,” said Paul Allen, the co-founder of Allen & Unwin and one of the biggest names in tech, according a report in The Wall Street Journal.
The company, which has been in stealth mode for the past three years, announced it had completed a $3 billion deal to acquire IBM for $30 billion on Wednesday.
The announcement came as Microsoft announced it would acquire rival Amazon for $500 billion, a move that is expected to help drive Amazon’s sales.
The deal will enable Watson to become the “biggest data analytics engine in the world,” according to the company’s presentation.
“It is not just about the machine learning,” said Michael Wysocki, chief executive of IBM Watson.
“It is about the whole picture.
It’s about the data, the analytics, the analysis, and the way it can be integrated.”
Watson’s new AI capabilities are expected to boost its revenue.
The deal will allow Watson to provide data on everything from traffic congestion to crime statistics, including the most likely cause of a crash, said the presentation.
“This means that Watson will provide us with better, more accurate and more complete information than ever before,” Wysicki said.
Watson is not the only new AI company to have its first big announcement in recent weeks.
The company also announced that it was investing in a new analytics research center in Palo Alto, California, in an effort to bolster its data science capabilities.
In recent months, Facebook has begun using the company as a platform for using machine learning to analyze its user data and improve its ads.
And in January, Microsoft announced that its research arm would invest in artificial intelligence, or AI, companies.
Microsoft declined to comment on whether it will use Watson in its advertising and analytics efforts.
Wynn has been quietly building a business around data analytics for more than a decade, according the Wall Street Report.
He has been involved in a number of data analytics businesses, including SAP, Facebook, and eBay, but the Watson acquisition represents a major change in his strategy, said Wysacki.
“I don’t think it’s going to be a change in the business,” Wiesacki said, noting that the company is still looking for big data analytics solutions. “I don