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Lanon Wee

IBM Divesting from Weather Sector

On Tuesday, IBM announced that it had reached a deal to sell The Weather Company and its assets, including The Weather Channel mobile app and websites, Weather.com, Weather Underground and Storm Radar, to private equity firm Francisco Partners. No financial details of the transaction were disclosed. IBM will still have access to the company's weather data, which it uses for some of its enterprise AI models. IBM had been evaluating the sale of The Weather Company, which claims a monthly audience of 415 million people, since April as part of its strategy of concentrating more on software, cloud services, and AI. On Tuesday, IBM announced that it will be selling its Weather Company division to Francisco Partners, a tech-focused private equity firm, for an undisclosed sum. The assets included in the sale are The Weather Channel mobile app and websites, Weather.com, Weather Underground, and Storm Radar, as well as its forecasting science and tech platform, and enterprise data services for the broadcast, media, aviation and ad tech industries. Francisco Partners intends to use the weather division to make it more consumer-facing, with new features relating to health and well-being. IBM will retain access to the weather data, which it uses to power some of its AI models for its enterprise customers. The data for this system is taken from both The Weather Company and NASA's satellite data, and is used for ESG analysis and natural disaster monitoring. IBM acquired the company in 2016 for $2 billion, and has been seeking to sell it since last April. The exact value of the sale was estimated to be more than a billion dollars. The sale American tech company is part of its strategy to focus on its key strengths such as software, cloud services, and AI. This includes its upcoming release of Watsonx for AI development for businesses, which includes a code generator, a toolkit for governance, and a library of AI models trained on language, geospatial data, IT events, and The Weather Company weather data.

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