S&P Global has agreed to acquire portfolio company Kensho, an AI-equipped information software provider, in a deal that will also allow GV to exit.

Financial data and analysis provider S&P Global agreed yesterday to acquire US-based data technology provider Kensho Technologies for approximately $550m, enabling internet and technology conglomeate Alphabet to exit.

S&P will pay for the company through a mixture of stock and cash, and the deal will represent the largest acquisition of an artificial intelligence company to date according to news publication Forbes. It is expected to close in the next few weeks.

Founded in 2013, Kensho has developed an artificial intelligence platform that allows users to ask questions about complex problems in plain English and receive answers within seconds, rather than having a human analyst comb through data for several hours or days.

The company has developed three products based on the technology, covering financial analytics, socioeconomic analytics – including areas such as healthcare – and national security respectively.

Kensho is a spinout from Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). It was co-founded by CEO Daniel Nadler, who obtained his PhD from Harvard University, and chief technology officer Pete Kruskall, who gained a Master of Engineering from MIT.

Nadler will remain at the helm of Kensho, which will stay an independent brand, reporting to S&P’s chief financial officer, Ewout Steenbergen. S&P expects the acquisition to improve the efficiency of its core internal operations and help clients gain more actionable insights.

Alphabet subsidiary GV took part in the company’s $10m seed round in 2014 alongside New Enterprise Associates, Accel, General Catalyst Partners and F-Prime Capital, the Fidelity Investments subsidiary then known as Devonshire Investors.

Investment banking firm Goldman Sachs led Kensho’s $15m series A round later the same year, and a regulatory filing in 2015 indicated the company had raised a further $47.8m.

Kensho announced a $50m series B round in February 2017 led by S&P Global that reportedly valued it at $500m but has not revealed whether it represented a continuation of the 2015 funding.

The series B round also featured Goldman Sachs and fellow financial services firms JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and Wells Fargo.

– The original version of this article appeared on our sister site, Global University Venturing.