Oracle has snapped up AI-powered company data business DataFox, the firm confirmed in a fairly low-key announcement set against the backdrop of its annual OpenWorld conference in San Francisco this week.
DataFox's cloud-based, AI data engine - and the resultant business content derived - offers greater insight to help drive and optimise decisions, according to an acquisition intention statement posted by Oracle.
In an open letter addressed to customers and partners, Steve Miranda, executive Vice President of applications development at Oracle, talked up the benefit of DataFox becoming part of the Oracle family.
"The combination of Oracle and DataFox will enhance Oracle Cloud Applications with an extensive set of AI-derived company-level data and signals, enabling customers to reach even better decisions and business outcomes," he wrote.
"Together, Oracle and DataFox will enrich cloud applications with AI-driven company-level data, powering recommendations to elevate business performance across the enterprise."
Given Oracle's focus on AI and machine learning during OOW this week, in some ways the acquisition comes as no real surprise. However, news of the purchase didn't garner much attention at the main event itself.
Regardless of the lack of fanfare, the acquisition appears to makes sense. DataFox has a wide and growing reach - it collects details information on just shy of three million businesses each year.
"Your strategy is only as good as the data underlying it. Our company data is built on 219,000+ hours of data science engineering and an army of white-glove analysts," it states on the firm's website.
Oracle issued a set of FAQs on its site to reassure key stakeholders that DataFox solutions would continue to be invested in post closure of the acquisition.
"We expect this will include more functionality and capabilities at a quicker pace. In addition, DataFox customers will benefit from better integration and alignment with Oracle's other product offerings," Oracle said.
