Sixth deal from Meltwater in ongoing M&A spree adds Stanford and Carnegie Mellon data science-focused PhDs to team, building AI-driven competitive edge for companies leveraging insights from external data.

Meltwater, a global leader in media intelligence, has announced the acquisition of Algo, a real-time data analytics platform powered by the most advanced machine-learning techniques available. The acquisition further strengthens Meltwater’s powerful media analytics and insights platform by bringing on Algo’s patented Velocity of Information engine, which surfaces rising trends from tens of millions of real-time data points. The acquisition also brings Algo’s team of award-winning information Natural Language Processing and information retrieval experts in-house to oversee development of new products.

Founded in 2015 by Matt Michelsen, Aaron Rama and Evon Onusic, Algo leverages machine learning and natural language processing to democratise online semantic data that currently only the tech giants have the infrastructure to support. Its Information Velocity algorithm is the foundation for several patents. It processes one billion data points daily in real time, determining which information is spreading fastest globally. The Algo app has been massively adopted, with over three million downloads.

“In this day and time we are all drowning in data. Meltwater’s goal is to give our clients access to smart technology that can cut through the clutter and extract critical insights from billions of data points - data points which would be impossible for a human being to make sense of,” said Jorn Lyseggen, CEO of Meltwater. “There is a vast amount of external data that companies today largely overlook containing real-time information about how competitors invest, how they hire, how they spend their ad budget, and how their products are received in the market. Anyone that is thoughtful about mining this information will create a powerful information advantage over their competitors.”

“We’re excited to marry Algo’s infrastructure with Meltwater’s current technology and become the global leader in media intelligence,” said Matt Michelsen, investor and co-founder of Algo. “The opportunity to help grow an international organisation committed to helping its customers gain an unprecedented level of analysis is exciting.”

The team behind Algo is composed of some of the best minds in data science. Adviser Eric Nyberg led development on IBM’s Watson. A PhD and pioneer in Natural Language Processing, Nyberg’s contributions of automatic text translation, information retrieval and automatic question answering have been fundamental to the industry. Nyberg currently leads the Language Technology Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. Rok Sosic, PhD, has also been instrumental in developing Algo, having created the first Linux Grid Cluster, considered the foundation of Grid Computing. Sosic has published 30 academic papers, holds several patents and founded Active Tools, which was acquired by TurboLinux. Matt Michelsen, investor in Palantir, Uber, and many others, invested and co-founded Algo in early 2015 with Rama and Onusic.

“Our platform ingests and analyses data from tens of millions of sources, in over 80 languages - in real time. Applying Algo’s information velocity engine on top of our existing streams will help us identify anomalies and predict trends in several micro and macro topics that are relevant to our customers," said Aditya Jami, Senior Director of Engineering and Head of AI at Meltwater.

The acquisition of Algo comes off the heels of several key AI acquisitions for Meltwater, cementing the company’s commitment to developing industry-leading data science and machine-learning technology. Meltwater recently acquired Hong Kong-based social big data SaaS solution Klarity. Earlier this year, it acquired Oxford University spinout, Wrapidity, to add AI media-monitoring capabilities to Meltwater’s platform, followed by Cosmify, to boost analysis of large data sets. Last year, Meltwater acquired Encore Alerts, a US-based machine-learning company.

Founded in 2001 by CEO Jorn Lyseggen with only $15,000, today Meltwater has more than 1,500 employees across 55 offices throughout six continents, and services 50 percent of Fortune 500 companies. Meltwater is actively seeking investment opportunities and partnerships to continue expanding its media intelligence services globally.