ServiceNow announced it has signed an agreement to acquire
Element AI, a leading artificial intelligence (AI) company with deep AI
capabilities and some of the world's brightest AI minds. Element AI will
significantly enhance ServiceNow's commitment to build the world's most
intelligent workflow platform, enabling employees to work smarter and
faster, streamline business decisions, and unlock new levels of
productivity.
A
pioneer in the AI industry, Element AI has world-class scientists and
practitioners who will bring expertise in applying modern AI to text and
language, chat, images, search, question response, and summarization
and will accelerate AI innovation natively in the Now Platform. Element
AI Co-founder and Lead Fellow, Dr. Yoshua Bengio, a winner of the 2018
ACM A.M. Turing Award for his pioneering contributions to modern AI,
will serve as a technical advisor for ServiceNow.
With
the acquisition of Element AI, ServiceNow will create an AI Innovation
Hub in Canada to accelerate customer-focused AI innovation in the Now
Platform. The new investment deepens ServiceNow's commitment to the
Canadian market, which has long been a leader in AI research and
represents one of the world's most significant locations for AI talent.
ServiceNow's AI Innovation Hub in Canada follows similar investments by
ServiceNow to create technology development centers in Chicago,
Hyderabad, Kirkland, Wash., San Diego, and Silicon Valley.
"AI technology is evolving rapidly as companies race to digitally transform 20th century
processes and business models," said ServiceNow Chief AI Officer Vijay
Narayanan. "ServiceNow is leading this once-in-a-generation opportunity
to make work, work better for people. With Element AI's powerful
capabilities and world class talent, ServiceNow will empower employees
and customers to focus on areas where only humans excel - creative
thinking, customer interactions, and unpredictable work. That's a
smarter way to workflow."
ServiceNow
has seen strong demand for its AI-powered products such as IT Service
Management Pro, Customer Service Management Pro, and HR Service Delivery
Pro. With practical, purpose-built AI and analytics capabilities
embedded into its Now Platform and workflow products, ServiceNow enables
enterprises to surface and summarize relevant information, understand
content and conversations, make predictions and recommendations, take
optimal actions, and automate repetitive tasks.
"Element
AI's vision has always been to redefine how companies use AI to help
people work smarter," said Element AI Founder and CEO, Jean-Francois
Gagné. "ServiceNow is leading the workflow revolution and we are
inspired by its purpose to make the world of work, work better for
people. ServiceNow is the clear partner for us to apply our talent and
technology to the most significant challenges facing the enterprise
today."
The
acquisition of Element AI is ServiceNow's latest strategic investment
to accelerate AI innovation in the Now Platform. In March, ServiceNow
hired Narayanan and launched Now Intelligence,
a set of powerful AI capabilities to help customers scale insight to
action. Element AI is ServiceNow's fourth AI acquisition in 2020,
following Loom Systems, Passage AI, and Sweagle.
The
Element AI team are leaders in the AI community and have pioneered
modern AI over the last decade. Element AI was founded in 2016 by CEO
Jean-Francois Gagné, Anne Martel, Nicolas Chapados, Jean-Sebastien
Cournoyer, Yoshua Bengio, and Philippe Beaudoin.
ServiceNow expects to complete the acquisition in early 2021.