• by Larissa Faw , October 15, 2015

Publicis.Sapient is acquiring a minority stake in Lucid, a software developer of artificial intelligence (AI), to help its clients deal with Big Data overload and better understand its information. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The Publicis Groupe unit is leveraging the investment to launch a new AI practice built around Lucid's Cyc platform that will "meld machine learning, analytics and data science." The move is designed to help its clients draw more specific connections across different data sources and thus make better media-buying decisions. 

The initial areas of focus will be financial services, healthcare, energy and marketing. To that end, Publicis.Sapient will introduce a new set of marketing intelligence services to help clients optimize and automate media buying, initiate more impactful targeted marketing campaigns, and improve the overall development, packaging, pricing and promotion of products and offerings. 

Publicis.Sapient will take advantage of Lucid’s ability to sift through, analyze and derive insights from multiple data sources to help its financial services clients gain competitive advantage. It will also work with healthcare organizations to apply AI technology to improve patient care, detect fraud, and accelerate research. 

Lucid works with the U.S. government and other organizations to address complicated issues. For instance, a global bank used Cyc to create the framework for a compliance investigation application that helps protect the bank from potential regulatory penalties and market cap hits.

"In particular, the new suite of marketing intelligence services expands our ability to capitalize on the explosion of consumer data to improve marketing performance while at the same time providing customer insights to guide business transformation efforts," stated Alan Herrick, CEO of Publicis.Sapient.