Stephen Pratt, the former InfoSys exec who joined IBM and left nine months later, has surfaced as chief executive of Noodle.ai, an artificial intelligence startup with funding from TPG Growth.
Details on the web site are sparce but what’s there reflects Pratt’s background at both InfoSys (INFY), which provides IT consulting, outsourcing and business process management, and IBM (IBM), which is as it keeps telling us, is a “cognitive computing and cloud” company. At IBM Pratt headed up Watson Global Business Services, which aimed to speed up commercialization of Watson, IBM’s flagship cognitive computing (or artificial intelligence) technology.
Noodle.ai’s web site says it “combines the hard sciences of AI technologies and business process optimization with the arts of organizational change and design thinking—all optimized to help you succeed quickly and affordably.” The New York Times Dealbook has more.
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Artificial intelligence is a hot button these days. Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), and the rest of the tech pantheon are pursuing top minds in this field and trying to make the technology applicable to every day life. The glory of AI is that computers learn by parsing lots of data and by performing tasks and are able to hone their performance on their own: They can “learn.”
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So there’s been a gold rush into this field by legacy technology players as well as a rash of startups. But Pratt told Computerworld that Noodle’s deep bench of experienced execs sets it apart.
Most AI companies focus on algorithms and data sets, he said. But “in order to come up with really powerful AI algorithms, you have to have a deep understanding of the subject matter. Most AI firms don’t speak both languages,” he told the publication.
Noodle’s bench includes chief data science officer Matt Denesuk, who previously held that title at GE Digital (GE). Chief customer officer Raj Joshi founded InfoSys Consulting and had prior executive stints at MicroStrategy (MSTR) and Deloitte Consulting.
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Noodle.ai has offices in San Francisco and Palo Alto, Calif. And Bangalore.