Autonomy seals 140,000 seat General Motors contract

UK artificial intelligence specialist Autonomy is to provide US car maker General Motors (GM) with a knowledge management software suite for 140,000 employees across the world.

Mike Lynch, CEO of Autonomy, said the deal will bring all GM's intellectual property assets together in a useable form. The contract is worth $2.2m.

The software will automatically catalogue and index all GM's corporate information - more than eight million documents spread around 1,000 separate intranet sites.

Lynch said: "GM is typical of many companies, in that there is a crisis in information. Unstructured information doubles every three months, and they really need a way to cope with this."

Autonomy's software claims to sort information via its subject matter, not keywords, and is used in search engines, intranets and portals. Lynch added there are more big deals in the pipeline.

John Holden, research analyst at the Butler Group, said the future was bright for Autonomy. He said: "I'm sure that where GM has gone, others will follow. In the knowledge economy, information is power, and Autonomy's software will empower employees by providing information pertinent to them."

However, Alan Pelz-Sharpe, senior analyst at Ovum, was less positive about the company, and claimed it had yet to prove it was worth its market capitalisation. He said: "This is undoubtedly a great deal for Autonomy. But you have to wonder how many companies of this size there are for this kind of product."

Autonomy floated last year on the European technology index Easdaq, and is also quoted on Nasdaq, with a market capitalisation in excess of $8bn.