INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Perhaps rightly, there has long been a perception that Google-owned Deepmind has been the most aggressive in hoovering up a lot of the
the social network behemoth is acquiring London-based Bloomsbury AI, a startup that has built natural language processing (NLP) technology
to help machines answer questions based on information gleaned from documents
issues.Bloomsbury is an alumni of Entrepreneur First, the company builder that invests in technical and domain expertise talent and helps
those individuals start companies
The startup is also backed by Fly.VC, Seedcamp, IQ Capital, UCL Technology Fund, and the U.K
assistant Alexa, is also an angel investor in Bloomsbury.Multiple sources say Facebook is paying between $23 million and $30 million to
acquire Bloomsbury AI, in a deal that will see a mixture of cash and stock change hands
million, paid in restricted Facebook stock
a larger multiple.Given the price and the stage Bloomsbury AI were at, the acquisition also has more than a whiff of acqui-hire to it,
although there is some IP in the deal
He is considered to be a leading expert in the area of NLP, and is a professor at UCL
According to his LinkedIn, he also co-founded and is an advisor to Factmata, the U.K
getting a commercially viable product out of the door
put the Bloomsbury AI team on the task of helping it develop technology to fight fake news on the platform and solve other aspects of its
its search and knowledge-base functionality.It is also understood that Bloomsbury AI being based in London was a factor, as Facebook aims to
have an AI presence in the U.K
capital city and is thought to be sourcing further acquisitions here.Multiple sources have confirmed the deal to us, although Facebook
declined to comment.Additional reporting by Ingrid Lunden
