IBM Watson, the supercomputer Ben Hider / Stringer / Getty

IBM’s Watson supercomputer is one of the world’s best-known artificial intelligence systems. But fame, it turns out, doesn’t mean fortune. According to one analyst, Watson isn’t making any money.

A scathing report from investment bank Jefferies claims that from an earnings per share perspective "it seems unlikely to us under almost any scenario that Watson will generate meaningful earnings results over the next few years".


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IBM Watson made its debut as a research project in 2006 and later gained fame after beating two human champions on classic US quiz show Jeopardy!. IBM has since spent a lot of time and money promoting its flagship product, posting more than 200 press releases on Watson, according to Jefferies. The supercomputer has been involved in a range of projects from changing the way doctors diagnose patients to powering friendly service robot Pepper.

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IBM has struggled to grow revenue over the last five years and results released this week revealed a $19.3bn (£14.8bn) drop since the previous year. While exact figures for Watson aren’t given, Jefferies pulled together a range of information, including market research data and public filings, to build financial models predicting Watson’s future prospects. The news wasn’t good.

According to the report, Watson is simply too pricey. While the report by Jefferies equity analyst James Kisner admits that Watson remains "one of the most complete off-the-shelf [AI] platforms available", it concludes that IBM is considered a "Cadillac" option in an increasingly crowded marketplace.


However, IBM maintains that Watson is still accessible for all. "Watson services are offered on either a subscription or a pay-per-use basis and everyone can get started for free," an IBM spokesperson told WIRED.

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The supercomputer is also very "picky" about the data that’s fed into it, with a large amount of preparation and human hand-holding needed. The report cites the case of University of Texas cancer research centre MD Anderson which began working with Watson to assist matching cancer patients to clinical trials. Though initial results were positive, a scathing report from university auditors later explained that the project had been put on hold after it blazed though more than $62 million (£47.6 million) without reaching its goals. There was no suggestion that IBM’s software was at fault, it highlighted the potential pitfalls and immense costs of actually using it.

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"Watson is clearly part of IBM's Strategic Imperatives, whose figures are reported," an IBM spokesperson told WIRED when quizzed on whether the supercomputer is making any money. While it's true that the Strategic Imperatives has performed well, with a 5 per cent on the previous year, this area also includes cloud, analytics, and security, with no specific figures on Watson's performance.


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"I don't think it makes sense to compare Watson directly with – what the report describes as 'Machine and Deep Learning for speech and image recognition applications' because Watson was at the outset (when playing Jeopardy) aimed at solving problems using a mixture of several AI-based methods, and in that sense it seems aimed at a completely different market," Dr Sean Holden from the University of Cambridge computer lab told WIRED.

"Image recognition, for example, is something that deep learning methods have turned out to be very good at; but Watson seems aimed at a completely different – and arguably much harder – class of problems.

"The fact that preparation of data might be difficult isn't surprising – it's often the case even for more basic machine learning applications.


"From a technical perspective, it doesn't surprise me that applying such a technology might at present be a challenge for many. But I would certainly hesitate in writing it off."

The report also claims that IBM is being "outgunned" in the battle for AI talent by the likes of Amazon and Apple, based on the number of AI-related job postings from each company.

While IBM may have had the AI world pretty much to itself in the past, Gartner predicted this week that AI will feature in almost every new software product by 2020. Other companies are already beginning to catch up, making large investments in AI that could knock Watson off its pedestal.