Dive Brief:
- Apple beefed up its artificial intelligence capabilities by acquiring Lattice Data for a reported $200 million per TechCrunch.
- Lattice Data specializes in using an AI-enabled inference engine to turn unstructured “dark” data into structured information.
- While little is know about how Apple will integrate Lattice Data, dark data — which refers to a company's information assets acquired during regular business activities that aren't typically used for analytics — can be of value by providing a more accurate view of a business and its customers.
Dive Insight:
Even though Apple is playing coy about how it intends to incorporate Lattice Data’s technology the acquisition is interesting because the firm’s tech is so specialized. The company was founded as the commercialization of DeepDive, a system created at Stanford to extract value from dark data. It’s estimated that 70% to 80% of digital data is unstructured and considered “dark.” Lattice Data’s tech turns that unstructured data into a more usable form through automated organization. It is possible Apple will use these capabilities to enhance its own internal business practices or that it is looking at ways to help marketers leverage dark data.
AI technology is a major area of investment and research for tech giants including Google, Facebook, Amazon, IBM, Salesforce and others. AI is driving a wide variety of different products and services ranging from voice-controlled digital assistants like Amazon’s Alexa, Google Assistant and Apple’s Siri, to automated data categorizing for marketing personalization and predictive analytics for campaign planning.
