Microsoft buys Powerset
Redmond-based Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) didn’t give a price, but media reports have pegged it at around $100 million. Growth is in store for the new acquisition, said Microsoft.
“We’re looking to add even more talented engineers to the San Francisco team to accelerate our shared progress,” Satya Nadella, Microsoft senior vice president, said in a statement.
Launched in May, Powerset’s “natural search” technology has been in the works for more than a year, after the company made an agreement with Xerox PARC to license its search technology. For now, Powerset users are only able to search through Wikipedia, which has its own semantic algorithms. A user searches Powerset by typing a regular question, such as “Who is winning the Giants game?” instead of the usual “Giants baseball score” keyword inquiry.
Microsoft recently abandoned an effort to acquire search engine Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO), and is said to be keenly interested in new search technologies.
Last November, Powerset won in the Search category of the Silicon Valley/San Jose, Calif. Business Journal’s Emerging Tech Awards. At the same time, co-founder and former Powerset CEO Barney Pell stepped down from his top spot to become CTO.
“As a first-time CEO my strengths were around the technology and vision and not necessarily around management of a large organization,” Pell said.
He co-founded Powerset with Lorenzo Thione in 2005 and has received $12.5 million in venture-capital funding from Foundation Capital, Founders Fund and other angel investors.
