WSJ: IBM To Acquire Weather, Combine Predictive Tech With Watson

IBM may be moving to broaden its Watson ecosystem with a $2 billion acquisition of the digital and data assets of Weather Co.

The deal, reported Tuesday by the Wall Street Journal, would bring IBM the WSI forecasting group of Weather Co.

The WSI division "houses technology and weather data that the Weather Co. collects, manipulates and licenses to companies ranging from airlines to utility companies to insurance providers," the Journal reported.

[Related: Stock Falls As IBM Investigated Over 'Revenue Recognition' Issues]

IBM had not replied to a CRN request for more information by publication time.

The Journal, citing sources familiar with the situation, said the deal would likely not include the Weather Channel, but instead focus on Weather Co.'s intellectual property and data.

Weather Co. and IBM already work to bring together Weather Co.’s weather data and forecast information and IBM’s cloud computing capabilities "so the two could come up with new ways to package and sell weather data and business solutions to different industries. IBM’s artificial intelligence service, Watson, is central to that arrangement," the Journal reported.

Gaining access to technology for predicting weather would be just the latest move by IBM to take advantage of its Watson predictive technology.

In August, IBM acquired Merge Healthcare, a global medical imaging pioneer based in Chicago, as part of a move to apply machine learning to diagnose diseases through its Watson Health Cloud.

IBM at the time said it has spent a decade been developing cognitive systems to make sense of the content of photos and videos, and said the Merge acquisition complements those image-processing skills with a platform for sharing medical images across clinical environments.

PUBLISHED OCT. 27, 2015