Salesforce acquires machine learning startup PredictionIO

Salesforce has acquired PredictionIO, a startup with general-purpose open source machine learning software, Simon Chan, the startup’s cofounder and chief executive, announced today. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.

“Over the past few years, we’ve been on a mission to scale and simplify development of machine learning technology,” Chan wrote in a blog post. “What started as a passion project quickly grew into much more — now with a community of more than 8,000 developers powering more than 400 apps. We’re so thankful for this community and the support you’ve given us.”

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The PredictionIO open source software will remain available under an open source Apache license. And the PredictionIO cluster service on top of the Amazon Web Services CloudFormation service will become available for free, Chan wrote. PredictionIO offers an enterprise service tier, but pricing information isn’t listed on the startup’s website.

Machine learning has become increasingly important to Salesforce, which has acquired RelateIQ and Tempo AI, among other companies. The company has been building out a data science team and has picked up talent in that area from LinkedIn, among other places.

Machine learning can be used in many applications, and other software companies have acquired machine learning startups too. Other machine learning startups include H2O.ai and Skytree.

PredictionIO started in 2013 and was based in Palo Alto, California. The startup raised a $2.5 million round in 2014. Investors include Quest Venture Partners, Azure Capital Partners, CrunchFund, the Stanford-StartX Fund, and Kima Ventures. PredictionIO’s customers included Dropbox.