Cisco announced its decision to acquire MindMeld, an artificial intelligence (AI) company based in San Francisco, for $125 million in cash and assumed equity awards.
The privately held MindMeld has developed a unique AI platform that enables enterprise customers to build intelligent and human-like conversational interfaces for applications or devices. Its machine learning (ML) technology delivers accuracy to help users interact with voice and chat assistants in a natural way.
Cisco, which has leadership in networking, data center, analytics, and unified communications, aims to take advantage of AI and ML and embed it across the network and the cloud.
AI and ML technology are powering Cisco’s products such as Stealthwatch, Cisco Spark Board, and Cisco Spark Room Kit and features like SpeakerTrack and VoiceTrack across video portfolio.
MindMeld’s AI technology will enable Cisco to deliver unique experiences throughout its portfolio, starting with collaboration.
Cisco and MindMeld can bring voice AI to meeting rooms, where Cisco’s video and telephony hardware will help increase adoption of AI technology across the workplace.
“This is a significant step toward making that workplace a reality. Integrating MindMeld into Cisco Spark platform will transform how users interact in Cisco Spark Spaces, Cisco Spark Meetings, and Cisco Spark Care,” said Rowan Trollope, senior vice president, Cisco IoT and Applications Group.
MindMeld’s team will join Cisco Cloud Collaboration group under the leadership of Jens Meggers, senior vice president and general manager, as the Cognitive Collaboration team.