STATS Continues Acquisitions Binge, Inks Deal for Automated Insights

STATS continued its whirlwind of acquisitions today by, as Automated Insights (Ai) has been acquired by Vista Equity Partners and STATS to fast-track the adoption of Ai’s natural language generation (NLG) technology across multiple industries including business intelligence, media, sports and more.

The deal comes just days after STATS acquired The Sports Network, which develops and delivers sports data to a unique client base, and six months after it acquired fellow sports data and analytics provider Bloomberg Sports.

Wordsmith, Ai’s NLG platform, automatically transforms raw data into narratives with the depth, personality, and variety of a human writer. The platform created over a billion articles and reports for its customers in 2014, which include The Associated Press, Yahoo! and Comcast.

“Our entire team is excited to accelerate our growth alongside Vista and STATS,” says Ai CEO Robbie Allen. “Vista immediately understood the value proposition of and opportunities for our solution, and we believe they will be a great partner in helping our team take Ai to the next level. With Vista’s support and experience, we will continue our focus on product development and innovation as well as exploring new frontiers of artificial intelligence. For Automated Insights, this acquisition opens up incredible possibilities.”

Automated Insights will remain headquartered in Durham, North Carolina, where the company will be a subsidiary of Vista-owned STATS.  Ai will continue to serve all of its current clients and will aggressively pursue opportunities in data-driven industries both within and beyond sports.

“Robbie and the team at Ai have built a truly unique platform that delivers tremendous value to its customers by bringing big data to life in the form of a narrative. We are thrilled to be partnering with the Ai management team to continue the focus on product leadership and innovation while pursuing the large opportunity within the sports industry and beyond,” says Robert F. Smith, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Vista Equity Partners.

Gary Walrath, CEO of STATS, praised Ai’s work in sports thus far, noting that STATS provides Ai with unprecedented data and audience reach. “The immediate benefits for our industry that result from the combination of STATS and Ai are incredible,” Walrath said. “We are excited about the unique capabilities our partnership will enable in sports data and technology, and the scale with which we will together be able to provide state-of-the-art new products to our customers.”

STATS is the global provider of sports technology, data and content. The company is owned by Vista Equity Partners (“Vista”), a private equity firm that invests in software, data, and technology-enabled businesses.