HubSpot Inc. is determined to catch the artificial intelligence wave that is sweeping through Silicon Valley. So today, the publicly traded marketing automation provider today announced the acquisition of Kemvi Inc., a small startup that has applied machine learning to market research.

Kemvi’s flagship DeepGraph platform scans the web for press releases, regulatory filings, social media posts and other updates that can provide insight into a company’s operations. The algorithms under the hood then extract key details into a dashboard aimed at helping salespeople identify potential engagement opportunities.

There are numerous situations where such data can come handy. If a retailer announces plans to expand into new locations, for instance, a startup that sells recruiting automation software could send relevant decision makers a targeted email offering to help with finding local staff.

Just like in advertising, such personalization has the potential to go a long way toward winning new clients. To further streamline sales operations, Kemvi has equipped DeepGraph with an email automation tool designed to make outreach less of a hassle. Users can have the software populate the name of a lead, their job title and other details into their messages to avoid getting bogged down in data entry.

HubSpot plans to incorporate DeepGraph into its customer relationship management platform. The service will be available alongside a number of homegrown AI capabilities that the company has released over the past few quarters. Among them is a lead scoring tool can automatically rank prospects based on how likely they are to make a purchase, which should benefit from the data that DeepGraph will bring into the mix.

HubSpot’s competitors are working just as hard to build out their AI capabilities. Salesforce.com Inc. is placing a particularly big focus on the technology, with its efforts revolving around a homegrown collection of machine learning services dubbed Einstein. Among them is a recently introduced set of developer tools designed to ease the deployment of object recognition and natural-language processing applications atop the Salesforce Platform.

Image: HubSpot