IBM Corp. recently moved its Jeopardy!-winning supercomputer, Watson, from Yorktown Heights to New York City’s East Village. Watson, which can understand and answer questions, will be changing careers from quiz show champion to business startup problem solver.
The Watson Group, IBM’s newly created business unit in the city, will provide a space for entrepreneurs to develop Watson-powered applications that provide solutions to complex business questions and allow them to test their innovations in a lab setting.
IBM will spend more than $1 billion on the unit, including $100 million in venture investments to support entrepreneurs developing Watson-powered applications. The group, led by IBM senior vice president Mike Rhodin, will employ 2,000, according to a statement on IBM’s website.
The Watson Group aims to develop business tools that will accelerate financial research, help visualize big data, enable analytics exploration and deliver personalized investment advice using Watson’s information and data stored in its memory system.
