UiPath Inc. has acquired Re:infer Ltd., a startup with a natural language processing platform that helps companies increase their operational efficiency.

UiPath announced the acquisition today. Re:infer previously raised $11.2 million in funding from investors. 

New York-based UiPath is a publicly traded provider of robotic process automation, or RPA, software. The company’s RPA platform can observe how workers perform a task in a business application and learn how to carry out that task automatically. Organizations use UiPath’s software to automate manual business chores, which saves time for employees and reduces the risk of human error.

Re:infer, meanwhile, is a London-based startup that was founded in 2015 by University College London researchers. The startup provides a natural language processing platform that can analyze data such as customer support requests and business documents to find ways of streamlining a company’s day-to-day operations.

One of the tasks that Re:infer promises to ease for enterprises is processing customer feedback. Using the startup’s platform, a company can analyze customer survey responses and other feedback to find useful patterns. A software-as-a-service provider, for example, could leverage the platform to automatically identify the most common feature requests. 

Streamlining customer service is another focus for Re:infer. According to the startup, its platform can analyze customer support requests and automatically route them to the most relevant department, a task that usually has to be performed manually. Re:infer says that its platform can streamline several related tasks as well, such as finding the root cause of the most frequently recurring help desk requests. 

Re:infer’s automation features are powered by a set of artificial intelligence models built into its platform. Organizations can train the AI models on their own internal business data, a process that increases neural network accuracy. Re:infer provides a no-code interface for carrying out AI training that it says doesn’t require machine learning expertise. 

UiPath will use the startup’s technology to enhance its RPA platform. Ted Kummert, UiPath’s executive vice president of products and engineering, wrote in a blog post today that the company will give customers the ability to create AI-powered RPA workflows for automating manual business tasks. Kummert added that Re:infer’s technology can also be used to equip existing RPA workflows with AI capabilities. 

“The UiPath tuck-in acquisition of NLP specialist Re:infer is another good example of data and AI increasingly being injected into apps,” commented Dave Vellante, co-founder and chief analyst at Wikibon. “The app/dev and data stacks are converging.”

Previously, UiPath acquired startup Cloud Elements Inc. last March. Cloud Elements developed a platform that simplifies the process of integrating disparate software systems with one another. UiPath used the startup’s technology to help customers more easily create RPA workflows that interact with applications via their application programming interfaces.

Earlier, UiPath acquired StepShot OÜ and ProcessGold AG. The former company developed software that makes it easier to create RPA workflows, while the latter firm provided process mining tools. Process mining is the task of mapping out business processes and finding opportunities to improve them, which is an important element of enterprise RPA projects. 

Photo: UiPath