IBM (NYSE: IBM) disclosed Wednesday that it has acquired AlchemyAPI, a provider of cognitive computing technology and services, in a move it says bolsters capabilities of its “Watson” supercomputer initiatives.

“Watson continuously learns, gaining in value and knowledge over time, from previous interactions,” IBM says. This deal is seen as another boost to its cognitive computing abilities to make sense “context computable,” according to one definition.

Taking data from a variety of sources and making it actionable is at the core of IBM’s latest addition.

AlchemyAPI, which was recognized as a “Cool Vendor” by research firm Gartner in 2014, touts itself as providing the capability for developers to create “easy-to-build smart apps for 
understanding customer needs and predicting their behavior.” The company says it is “powering the new AI [artificial intelligence] economy.”

The deal also brings IBM a huge user base. Some 40,000 developers around the world already utilize AlchemyAPI {application program interface) technology.

News site TechCrunch is positive about the deal: “This is a natural extension of what Watson is doing around artificial intelligence and natural language processing.”

Adds SeekingAlpha about IBM’s Watson moves: “IBM rolled out the cloud-based Watson Analytics service last year to good reviews, as well as a cloud app development platform (Bluemix) that supports Watson services and APIs. It also bought a virtual assistant startup (Cognea) to help Watson deliver ‘conversational services.'”

Thinking Deep

“The AlchemyAPI cloud platform makes it easy to create smart apps that deeply understand the world’s conversations, reports and photos so you can align your business with customer preferences and intent,” the company says.

The end result?

“We help you take action. Boost revenues. Cut costs. All by quickly transforming vast numbers of web pages, tweets, emails and images into facts and knowledge on how people feel about your product, campaign, offer or service.”

A big focus on Watson is so-called deep learning. Wikipedia defines it as: “Deep learning (deep structured learning or hierarchical learning) is a set of algorithms in machine learning that attempt to model high-level abstractions in data by using model architectures composed of multiple non-linear transformations.”

According to IBM, “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.”

Building Watson’s Capabilities

Just last month, IBM expanded Watson services to Japan and is partnering with Softbank to incorporate some Watson capabilities into robots. Watson also is learning Japanese.

Big Blue says the acquisition is designed to “accelerate” its development of cognitive computing applications.

News site The Next Web also sees the APIs boosting another Watson service: “It’s likely to feed into the Watson Analytics service which was opened everyone late last year.”

“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 of IBM Watson, in a statement. “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.”

Under the new strategy of Chair and CEO Ginni Rometty, IBM is investing some $4 billion in an attempt to grow Watson and cloud computing revenues to as much as $40 billion. IBM is also undergoing major changes in restructuring of its work force and management structure with some $600 million committed to reorganization costs and related layoffs.

The AlchemyAPI buy immediately adds APIs for Watson clients, including detection, labeling and extraction of detail from images and text as well as visual recognition.

AlchemyAPI, which is based in Denver, launched in 2005.

Elliot Turner, founder and CEO, AlchemyAPI, says the deal means more opportunity for the company.

“We founded AlchemyAPI with the mission of democratizing deep learning artificial intelligence for real-time analysis of unstructured data and giving the world’s developers access to these capabilities to innovate. As part of IBM’s Watson unit, we have an infinite opportunity to further that goal,” he said in a statement.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Read more at: http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/46205.wss