Automation Solutions Company UiPath Acquires NLP Company Re:infer

The automation in contact centers today is an attempt to keep costs low on the company support end while simultaneously providing customers with multichannel self-service options that allow them to solve their own problems rather than wait for a live agent.

In many technologies, artificial intelligence (AI) drives automation so the automation solutions can better understand how to help, and when to pass an issue off to a live agent. Often, this means using natural language processing solutions to understand customer intent and respond to it appropriately.

There is a significant need for this type of AI-driven natural language processing. Many companies today are simply overwhelmed in various types of customer information and lack sufficient means to parse it for actionable intelligence. Automating the interpretation of documents and communications data bridges the gap between humans and information technology systems, and structured and unstructured data to supercharge digital transformation efforts in the enterprise.

“Automation and AI are a powerful and natural pair that together empower the vision of the fully automated enterprise,” said Ted Kummert, executive vice president of products and engineering at UiPath. “Our customers are awash in documents, communications, and data that they need to understand the meaning of and process efficiently.”

To deliver that power, enterprise automation software company UiPath has acquired Re:infer, a London-based natural language processing (NLP) company for unstructured documents and communications. Founded in 2015 by Ph.D. scientists from the AI research lab at University College London, Re:infer uses machine learning (ML) technology to mine context from communication messages and transform them into actionable data with speed and accuracy.

Re:infer’s product capabilities are currently available to UiPath customers in private preview. UiPath is expected to make a full launch this fall.

Edited by Erik Linask