Natural language processing pioneer Lexalytics acquired by InMoment

Natural language processing platform developer Lexalytics has been acquired by InMoment.

While the financials of the deal have not been disclosed, Lexalytics will keep its brand name moving forward, and will be referred to as 'Lexalytics, an InMoment company.'

Lexalytics employees, including its founder Jeff Catlin, will continue in their roles.

“We’re excited to welcome the extraordinarily talented Lexalytics team to InMoment,” said InMoment CEO Andrew Joiner.

Bringing ‘flexibility’ to native text analytics

The Massachusetts-based Lexalytics creates software platforms that utilize NLP, machine learning, and AI to analyze text and translated it into profitable decisions.

The likes of Hootsuite, Biogen, and Kaplan are among its customers, using its software to create actionable insights from customer, employee, and marketplace interactions.

Catlin, who founded the company in 2003, was previously a development VP at TopicalNet – a classification systems vendor that specialized in developing large-scale taxonomies.

“By joining InMoment we have the remarkable opportunity to push additional innovative solutions and transformative expertise to our customers around the globe,” Catlin said.

His firm is now owned by InMoment – which was founded a year prior to Lexalytics by John Sperry.

Sperry founded the ‘experience improvement’ tool developer - and served as its CEO from the company’s inception until March 2017, where he opted to bring in Joiner to “focus my efforts on innovation” – instead becoming the company’s chair and chief scientist.

InMoment’s founder then left the company in May 2019, where he would go on to co-create Halosight, an augmented analytics company built natively for the Salesforce AppExchange. He currently serves as Halosight’s CEO.

“This combination brings tremendous flexibility to organizations that require private, public, or hybrid cloud text analytics infrastructures—and unlocks exciting new market opportunities with native text analytics across 24 languages and the most industry data sets of any other provider,” a statement announcing the purchase reads.

Lexalytics’s chief scientist Paul Barba recently spoke with Omdia analyst Mark Beccue – to work out whether AI can combat fake news.