In what has to be considered an anticlimactic ending, IBM sold off the data assets of its Watson Health unit to private equity firm Francisco Partners today. The two firms did not share the purchase price, but previous reports pegged the value at around $1bn.
It went on to spend $1 billion on Merge Healthcare and wrapped up its spending, buying Truven Health Analytics the following year for $2.6 billion. Although the company had high hopes that Watson Health would help drive its artificial intelligence push, the unit failed to produce the results it was hoping for and when Arvind Krishna replaced Ginni Rometty as CEO in 2019, he had different priorities.
IBM is making this sale just as the healthcare vertical is heating up. Last year, Oracle bought health records company Cerner for $28 billion and Microsoft bought Nuance Communications in a deal valued at nearly $20 billion. While both deals are pending regulatory approval, it shows how much large companies value the health vertical.
Read more: Tech Crunch
