The demand from ServiceNow customers to reach a growing global audience is what prompted the IT automation supplier to conclude an agreement to purchase Passage AI, a company specializing in the ability of its software to learn languages .
“They use deep learning to support many languages. They have proven it in the field. We found the team to be technically very strong,” Debu Chatterjee, senior director, AI Engineering told ServiceNow to CRN. “Their deep learning technology, which they use to bring a language on board and understand its purpose, was very scalable. We can use it to support many languages. It was a big challenge for us to get them on board to bring.”
The Mountain View, California, was founded in 2016 by CEO Ravi N. Raj, and chief technology officers Madhu Mathihalli and Mitul Tiwari. The deal should close by the end of the quarter, ServiceNow said. The financial terms of the transaction were not released. The ServiceNow stock traded 2 percent higher yesterday afternoon, up 6.23 points to $ 313.86.
The Passage AI conversation platform is built on “deep learning models” that can be trained to understand text in all major languages, Chatterjee said. ServiceNow said one area it could immediately help is be on the Now Platform , where it will expand the company's non-English language support for chatbots.Using the capabilities of Passage AI on ServiceNow, a work request run in German or a customer request run in Japanese by the virtual agent.
“We can apply it to any language our customers want,” Chatterjee told CRN. “We already support our product in a number of these languages, so supporting AI conversations in those languages is just as important, because customers work there.”
Chatterjee said ServiceNow sees this being used primarily outside of North America, and places where multiple languages and dialects are spoken.
ServiceNow said in a statement that this agreement builds on the company's previous AI acquisitions, including transactions with Attivio, Parlo, FriendlyData, Qlue and DxContinuum.
This latest announcement comes less than a week after ServiceNow said it was planning to purchase another AI company, Loom Systems, to expand its artificial intelligence for IT operations, or AIOps, capabilities.
The Loom Systems bring advanced capabilities around log data that will enhance the ServiceNow platform, said Jeff Hausman, vice president and general manager of IT operations and security for Santa Clara, California.
The ServiceNow platform uses AIOps in combination with the company's IT operations management and IT services management to address customer issues, identify shortcomings, correct problems and make suggestions before a problem becomes clear, said Hausman to CRN.
Passage AI had raised a total of $ 10.3 million in venture capital since its founding of a variety of investors such as Blumberg Capital, Storm Enterprises, Engineering Capital and 11.2 Capital, according to Crunchbase.
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