Element AI was established in 2016 and mainly sells SaaS products for intelligent document processing. This startup company offers three solutions. Knowledge Scout is a cognitive search engine that combines natural language understanding and graph-oriented databases to facilitate the discovery of company information.
Document Intelligence uses extraction models and automated workflows to accelerate data collection in documents. On the other hand, Access Governor must allow better management of roles and access to the various tools and software of the organization, such as when employees arrive at the company or leave.
ServiceNow joins the ranks of artificial intelligence research and development
“The acquisition of Element AI provides ServiceNow with a large and experienced development workforce. [de l’intelligence artificielle et du machine learning]And advanced software for various functions such as language processing to enrich its product portfolio,” said Dave Schubmehl, research director of IDC’s intelligent cognitive/artificial systems and content analysis.
The Montreal-based publisher also provides a set of APIs for artificial intelligence-driven tasks, including visual and object anomaly detection, optical character recognition, prediction, text extraction, and artificial intelligence interpretability.
Dave Schubmehl said that ServiceNow can integrate Element AI technology into its flagship platform Now.
“At the same time, the Element AI developer team can help while researching and developing future AI components that ServiceNow will improve in the coming years,” he added.
In a statement on November 30, ServiceNow, headquartered in Santa Clara, California, also stated that it will establish an artificial intelligence innovation center in Canada, focusing on expanding intelligent labor in its Now platform. According to Radio Canada, in addition to Element AI experts, nearly 200 ServiceNow employees will be sent to the scene.
Quebec’s controversial acquisition
The terms of the acquisition have not been disclosed, but the aggregator Crunchbase said that Element AI has raised a total of $257.5 million in funding. For its part, TechCrunch evoked several sources, including a spokesperson for ServiceNow, who estimated the cost of the business to be approximately $500 million. At the time of the last fundraising, the value of Quebec’s young filming was between US$6.00 and US$700 million.
According to Le Devoir, due to Caisse des Dépôts et Placements du Quebec and the Quebec government’s investment of up to 10 million U.S. dollars (the committed U.S. $25 million), the transfer to the California company made Canada backtrack.
“ServiceNow uses targeted acquisitions to add expertise and pre-existing components to its development team.”
Dave SchubmelIDC Research Director.
In addition, the “Daily Mail” revealed that the acquisition was accompanied by a wave of dismissals, and ServiceNow would not disclose the extent. According to its website, Element AI has 350 employees in North America, Asia and Europe.
This is ServiceNow’s fourth acquisition of Loom Systems, dialogue intelligence startup Passage AI, and management experts ITSM and DevOps Sweagle in 2020. In 2019, this American group has already got another actor, Attivio, in the field of cognitive search.
“ServiceNow has identified artificial intelligence and machine learning as key differentiating factors for its software products, and has added expertise and pre-existing components to its development team through targeted acquisitions,” concluded Dave Schubmehl.
