Semantic Machines

Semantic Machines was a conversational artificial intelligence company that built technology intended to let computers understand conversations rather than isolated commands. Its stated approach used machine learning to help users discover, access and interact with information and services more naturally and with less effort, enabling machines to communicate, collaborate, understand user goals and complete tasks.

A core product was the Conversation Engine, which extracted semantic intent from natural voice or text input and generated a self-updating learning framework for managing dialog context, state, salience and end-user goals. The engine also included natural language generation technology that formulated responses to the user based on dialog context. The company positioned this against existing assistants such as Apple Siri, Microsoft Cortana and Google Now, which it described as understanding commands but not conversations.

Sources differ on the company's location: contemporaneous acquisition coverage and Microsoft's announcement describe Semantic Machines as based in Berkeley, California, while a business-data listing places it in Newton/Massachusetts. The company was described as small, with an employee range of 2-10.

Founding story

The company was founded in 2014. CEO Dan (Daniel) Roth co-founded it with UC Berkeley professor Dan Klein and former Apple chief speech scientist Larry Gillick, among others. Roth was previously a founder of Voice Signal Technologies (acquired by Nuance Communications for $300 million in 2007) and Shaser BioScience (acquired by Spectrum Brands for $100 million in 2012). Co-founder and CFO Damon Pender had earlier been CFO of TeraDiode, Shaser BioScience and NeoSaej. Co-founder and CTO Larry Gillick had been VP of Research at Dragon Systems, VP of Core Technology at Voice Signal Technologies, VP of Research for mobile devices at Nuance and Chief Speech Scientist for Siri at Apple. Co-founder, Chief Scientist and VP of Research Dan Klein is a full professor of computer science at UC Berkeley and was previously Chief Scientist at Adap.tv. Stanford University professor Percy Liang was also cited among the company's conversational AI leaders. Several staff members had previously worked at Nuance.

Traction

Reported funding of $20.9 million across two rounds (per Crunchbase as cited in 2018) or $12M over two rounds per a later data listing; estimated revenue range of $1M-$10M. The principal traction event was the 2018 acquisition by Microsoft.

Latest developments

As of a May 2019 report cited in an aggregator listing, Microsoft and Semantic Machines researchers were building conversational AI combining skills and context so digital assistants such as Cortana could act on user requests. A business-data profile dated July 2026 still lists the entity with roughly 5 employees, a revenue estimate of $1M-$10M and $12M in funding.