IBM plans to acquire The Weather Company's product and tech businesses
International Business Machines on Wednesday announced an agreement to acquire The Weather Co.'s B2B, mobile, and cloud-based web properties, including WSI, weather.com, Weather Underground and The Weather Company brand.
The TV segment — The Weather Channel — is not included in the deal, but The Weather Co. will license weather forecast data and analytics from IBM under a long-term contract, according to a statement by the company.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The move will help bolster IBM's artificial intelligence play, Watson, by giving it access to The Weather Co.'s cloud platform, the company statement said in a statement.
The Weather Co.'s app is the fourth most-used mobile app daily in the United States and handles 26 billion inquiries to its cloud-based services each day, according to the statement. Reuters had earlier reported that a deal could be announced as early as this week.
Shares of IBM were 1 percent higher in early trading immediately following the announcement. (Get the latest quote here.)
—Reuters contributed to this report.