Expect Labs Partners with Factual to Enhance Its Anticipatory Computing Technology

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 5, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Expect Labs, a San Francisco startup that is developing a platform to power a new generation of intelligent digital assistants, today announced a partnership with Factual, Inc. Expect Labs' technology platform, the Anticipatory Computing Engine, is the first commercial solution designed to analyze and understand conversations in real-time and proactively find related information. Through the partnership with Factual, the knowledge base of Expect Labs' Anticipatory Computing Engine will further expand to include information about millions of local businesses, venues, and points of interest.

Founded in 2011, Expect Labs has pioneered the development of technology that promises to make digital assistants more intuitive and intelligent. Over the past two years, Expect Labs' team of PhDs and research experts have developed a new class of technologies to understand the meaning of continuous conversations. Based on this understanding, Expect Labs' platform can model the context of your interactions in real-time, and proactively find information you may want before you need to search for it. The company is backed by prominent Silicon Valley investors including Google Ventures and Greylock Partners.

With the availability of digital assistants like Siri, the past year has witnessed the emergence of a first generation of intelligent mobile applications. With the launch of Expect Labs' Anticipatory Computing Engine, application intelligence can now be extended well beyond answering questions and simple voice search. Since it is designed to pay attention continuously as you use your device, Expect Labs' technology can bring context-aware intelligence to a wide range of applications related to real-time communication and collaboration. 

As an initial demonstration of the capabilities of this platform, Expect Labs has built MindMeld, which is the first mobile communications app that can actually understand conversations in real-time. Based on this understanding, MindMeld proactively finds related information from your social graph or across the Web so that any information you may need is always at your fingertips. In many cases, MindMeld can find the information you may want before you need to search for it. As a result, real-time conversations on your smartphone or tablet can be easier and more productive.

"As applications become more intelligent, a key ingredient to enable this intelligence is access to a comprehensive knowledge base," said Gil Elbaz, the CEO and Founder of Factual. "We are excited to partner with Expect Labs to demonstrate how our extensive global places data set can enable new types of intelligent behavior in MindMeld."

"Factual has created the industry's definitive data source for local business and POI information," said Timothy Tuttle, CEO of Expect Labs. "We look forward to partnering with them to pioneer this new class of anticipatory computing applications."

Expect Labs came out of stealth mode in late 2012 and has since received numerous industry accolades and has been widely recognized in the press as a leader in the fast-emerging field of anticipatory computing. Expect Labs has been selected as a finalist at the 2012 TechCrunch Disrupt startup competition, the 2013 CES Mobile App Showdown, and the 2013 SXSW Innovative Technology Accelerator. Expect Labs' iPad app MindMeld was also selected as "Best in Show" at the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show and was featured by Popular Science as one of the "hottest gadgets" of 2013.

About Expect Labs
Expect Labs (http://www.expectlabs.com) is a startup based in San Francisco that is building a technology platform designed to reinvent how we have conversations. Expect Labs is the creator of the iPad app called MindMeld, which is the first voice and video calling app that can actually understand conversations in real-time to make it easy to find and share related information as you talk. Expect Labs was founded in early 2011 by successful, repeat entrepreneurs who have built and sold large-scale Internet businesses. Our team includes PhDs and world-class researchers from places like the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, Carnegie Mellon University, Bell Labs and HP Labs. The company is backed by some of Silicon Valley's most well-known investors including Google Ventures, Greylock Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, IDG Ventures, KPG Ventures, Quest Venture Partners and several prominent angels.

About Factual, Inc.
Factual provides access to definitive global data for powering web and mobile apps, mobile advertising, and enterprise solutions. Our focus is on making data more accessible (i.e. cheaper, higher quality, less encumbered) for machines and developers, to drive and accelerate innovation in an unprecedented way. We take on the dirty work of data management and data curation, letting developers focus on higher value and more productive tasks. We provide clean, structured data with complete source transparency to developers via both download and API access on liberal terms.

iPad is a trademark of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. © 2012.

SOURCE Expect Labs