Acquisition expands Altair data analytics and generative AI

Altair has acquired Cambridge Semantics, creators of analytical knowledge graphs, that can help powering next generation enterprise data fabrics and generative AI.

Altair says that Cambridge Semantics’ graph-powered data fabric technology can accelerate the creation of comprehensive enterprise knowledge graphs, integrating the complex web of structured and unstructured enterprise data together into a single, simplified view.

Manufacturers currently use Cambridge Semantics Anzo to integrate siloed data into enterprise-scale knowledge graphs, enabling connectedness and interoperability across end to end R&D, manufacturing, and product lifecycle – helping power Digital Twin, IoT, smart manufacturing, Industry 4.0, and related digital transformation initiatives.

Altair CEO James R. Scapa broke this down further, explaining that knowledge graphs are key pieces of data fabrics. “They put the right data in the right hands at the right time,” he said, adding that knowledge graphs are critical for successful generative AI applications as they provide the business context necessary to ground generative AI models, eliminate ‘hallucinations’, and dramatically improve response quality.

By bringing together Cambridge Semantics’ knowledge graph technology with its tools for data analytics and data science Altair hopes to offer organisations a solid foundation for building advanced analytics ecosystems that inject AI into day-to-day business operations.

Cambridge Semantics’ technologies will be integrated into the Altair RapidMiner platform, adding knowledge graph, data governance, data virtualisation, and data discovery technology to the platform’s existing data preparation tools.

Cambridge Semantics has historically found success with Fortune 500 government, defence, life science and manufacturing organisations, having been founded in 2007 by an innovation and engineering team from IBM’s Advanced Technology Group. Its technical team was fundamental to the development of data warehouses IBM Netezza and Amazon Redshift and represents one of the largest single collections of knowledge graph experts in the world.

“This acquisition adds deep data warehousing expertise to our already strong analytics and data science team, creating an enhanced core group of engineers that understand the entire data lifecycle – from data creation to real impact,” said Altair CTO Srikanth Mahalingam. “We are all excited about where this combined team and technology will take us.”