General Electric has acquired two machine learning start-ups that will increase its artificial intelligence capability, while also helping it to compete with IBM Watson.
The company has acquired Bit Stew Systems and Wise.io, in an effort to expand its Predix platform for industrial internet applications, which connects big machines such as power plants and aircraft engines to databases and analytical software.
Bit Stew refers to itself as a company that can “intelligently ingest data, model it, make sense of it, [and] establish relationships and cleanse the data through our artificial intelligence engine”. It applies machine learning to large data sets used in utilities, aviation, oil, gas production and manufacturing.
Meanwhile, Wise.io describes itself as “building machine learning applications for the customer experience market”. It is a company that is “really well-built for the industrial world”, said Bill Ruh, chief executive officer of GE Digital in a comment to Reuters.
Terms of the deals have not been disclosed.