Data science is nothing if not tedious, in ordinary practice. The initial tedium consists of finding data relevant to the problem you're trying to model, cleaning it, and finding or constructing a good set of features. The next tedium is a matter of attempting to train every possible machine learning and deep learning model to your data, and picking the best few to tune. Then you need to understand the models well enough to explain them; this is especially important when the model will be helping to make life-altering decisions, and when decisions may be reviewed by regulators. Finally, you need to deploy the best model (usually the one with the best accuracy and acceptable prediction time), monitor it in production, and improve (retrain) the model as the data drifts over time.

Among the many companies investing in artificial intelligence, there is one surprisingly exclusive group: companies that generate value from AI. And right now, at least, the odds against gaining admission are sobering. According to a survey of more than 2,500 executives - conducted for a new report by MIT Sloan Management Review, BCG Gamma, and BCG Henderson Institute - seven out of ten companies report minimal or no gains so far from their AI initiatives. Why do some efforts succeed, but many more fail? The only one that struck me was #3.

DataRobot, a company best known for creating automated machine learning models known as AutoML, announced today that it intends to acquire Paxata, a data prep platform startup. The companies did not reveal the purchase price. Paxata raised a total of $90 million before today's acquisition, according to the company. Up until now, DataRobot has concentrated mostly on the machine learning and data science aspect of the workflow -- building and testing the model, then putting it into production. The data prep was left to other vendors like Paxata, but DataRobot, which raised $206 million in September, saw an opportunity to fill in a gap in their platform with Paxata.

BOSTON – December 12, 2019 – DataRobot, the leader in enterprise AI, today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Paxata, the pioneer of self-service data preparation and leading data fabric provider, to fulfill its mission to build the world's first automated end-to-end enterprise AI platform. While the massive impact of AI on enterprises is well understood -- PwC forecasts by 2030 AI could contribute $15.7 trillion to the global economy -- companies must overcome several key challenges associated with AI in order to reap the benefits and become successful. Data preparation is one area that has historically held companies back. Creating a dataset for training predictive models, deploying data prep steps with AI models, and preparing data specific to AI routines are all major challenges companies face when it comes to leveraging data at scale. By providing tools that help users build automation into their data prep processes, the Paxata acquisition will alleviate these pain points for customers and dramatically enhance their ability to achieve AI-driven outcomes rapidly.

Paxata, the pioneer in self-service data preparation, today announced that it was named an innovator in Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) "Innovation in the Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) for Data Integration and Preparation" Top 3 report. According to the findings, more than half of all participants (52 percent) said that the use of AI or ML to automate the data preparation or integration process is important to their organization. Because of the prominent role of data integration and preparation in any analytics project, the report stated that AI-enablement should be a priority for analytics leaders at all levels as it provides organizations with the ability to overcome the constraints of legacy or less-automated data processing. The complimentary report can be downloaded here. "The next major shift in the analytics, business intelligence, and data management markets is coming from the use of AI and ML across the entire information supply chain. Along with using machine learning to find the next-best offer, companies can now point algorithms at modern data platforms to find links between data sets, automate data preparation, or breaches in data governance," said John Santaferraro, Research Director at EMA and lead author of the report.

"The next major shift in the analytics, business intelligence, and data … Along with using machine learning to find the next-best offer, companies can …

Paxata today announced it has raised 33.5 million to bolster the machine learning and semantic analysis foundations of its enterprise information platform. Led by Intel Capital, today's investment is Paxata's fourth funding round and brings its total capital raised to 61.5 million. Paxata's platform provides a self-service, visual approach for information management to large corporations. "We target the one billion people in the enterprise who know how to use Microsoft Excel and want to use data to make business decisions," said Nenshad Bardoliwalla, cofounder and chief product officer of Paxata, at the Intel Capital Global Summit. According to Bardoliwalla, Paxata helps those who need fast access to meaningful data without having to write code or learn to use Hadoop. Called AnswerSets, the company's product connects big data analytics to the operational applications used by business analysts, chief data officers, and IT managers.

For more information on what makes Intel Capital one of the world's most powerful venture capital firms, visit www.intelcapital.com or follow @Intelcapital. About Deutsche Telekom Capital Partners (DTCP) Deutsche Telekom Capital Partners (DTCP) is Deutsche Telekom's investment management group. With approximately 2 billion under management and advisory, and a portfolio of over 70 companies, DTCP provides venture capital, private equity, and strategic advisory services to the technology, media and telecommunication sectors. Operating as a bridge between Europe, Silicon Valley and Israel, the company connects people, capital, and ideas to accelerate innovation and provide value to its portfolio companies, its limited partners, and the connected world.