When we think of artificial intelligence, IBM’s Watson immediately comes to mind. Watson has been one of the biggest investors in the AI market, making several acquisitions over the last year. One of the biggest stories from Watson recently was its $2.6B acquisition of Truven Health Analytics. We discussed this deal, along with several others by IBM, in our “Sellers Conversation” webcast this past March.
The continued development of hyper fast processing platforms like Watson will accelerate the development of cognitive applications that will change the way we live. This is a huge opportunity for entrepreneurs and a large percentage of the M&A activity in the software industry in the future will be cognitive applications. Apple brought Siri into our lives and now Amazon Alexa and Echo are taking this to another level. That annoying alarm every morning will be replaced by, “Good morning, Bill. What would you like to do today?”
Early-adopters of the AI tech wave will reap the benefits of spiking interest in autonomous products, and you want to make sure you’re operating as a “disruptor” in the space, rather than being disrupted.