Algolia acquires Google DNI-funded MorphL, an AI/ML platform

MorphL’s AI/ML platform to fuel Algolia’s new AI offerings

Algolia’s headless, API-first “building block” approach eliminates barriers to AI implementation, helping businesses drive conversion and personalization

Algolia, the leading Search-as-a-Service company, announced that it has acquired MorphL, a Google Digital News Initiative-funded startup, to help power Algolia’s new AI offering. This new suite of API-based Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) models enables developers, data scientists, and marketers to predict users’ intent, personalize online experiences, and create highly-targeted offers.

To feed the desire for users’ expectations for instant gratification, companies are depending more and more on modern technologies such as AI. However, applying AI to every point in a user’s journey can be complex. Historically, developers’, data scientists’, and marketers’ options have been limited to a reliance on either “opaque” proprietary or open source offerings, or to build their own models from scratch — which could take several weeks or months.

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Bernadette Nixon, Chief Executive Officer, Algolia, said: “I am thrilled to welcome MorphL to the Algolia family. It’s an exciting time — brands are looking to create meaningful connections with people, and that requires understanding intent in the moment, personalized navigation, search, and recommendations or offers. Sounds easy enough, but ask most Chief Digital Officers or heads of eCommerce and it’s not.”

Algolia’s AI offering simplifies the ability to understand users’ intent so that it is possible to personalize experiences and offers — even from “first visit” and “first search.” Nixon further noted that “this will enable companies to move beyond content-based experiences to predictive, intent-based experiences. Importantly, it will enable online retailers to monetize new products, new visitors, and infrequent visitors like they have never been able to do before.”

This acquisition extends Algolia’s leading intelligent search APIs, with recommendations and user behavior models all along the customer journey, so companies can deliver powerful, intent-based experiences and iterate quickly in response to market trends and user propensity profiles.

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Algolia’s AI suite is highly flexible due to its API-first approach, the complete availability of its underlying data, and the ease with which developers and marketers can build upon its AI and ML models. It also allows them to leverage their market knowledge to manage and tune the entire experience.

Ciprian Borodescu, Chief Executive Officer, MorphL, added: “Many companies are trying to make it easier to use AI, but few are making it as simple as MorphL. Indeed, our mission has always been to democratize AI and to empower developers and marketers, who wish to enhance their digital offerings with a simple ‘plug and play’ building block interface for building their intent-based, omnichannel sites and applications.”

Algolia AI is the product of significant internal innovation and the acquisition of MorphL, an AI tech start-up awarded with a Google Digital News Initiative grant and selected to the Techstars Montreal AI Accelerator.

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