Watson, IBM’s computer that bested game-show champ Ken Jennings on “Jeopardy” four years ago, has just purchased a piece of Denver intelligence.

Big Blue plans to announce Wednesday that it acquired AlchemyAPI, the Denver artificial intelligence software developer, for an undisclosed price to join its Watson business team.

Alchemy, which employs 18 people, built deep-learning software that helps computers like Watson quickly make sense of how humans communicate.

“They complement the work we’ve been doing and bring an added dimension to the work we’ve been doing,” said Steve Gold, IBM Watson Group vice president of partner programs and venture investments. “And they’ve developed a phenomenal following.”

Both companies work in the world of unstructured data, which is the data humans create for other humans. Computers are programmed to understand ones and zeros — and not the nuances in chats, videos or photos.

“It brings together natural language and the understanding of how humans interact and exchange ideas,” Gold said. “It’s putting content into context.”

Watson became an IBM business unit last year as the New York company invested $1 billion to create commercial applications.

Last year, analyst Tom Austin, with market researcher Gartner, put Alchemy in its “Cool Vendors in Smart Machines” list and considered the Denver firm a potential IBM Watson competitor.

What IBM needed was more developers to create applications. Alchemy has a community of 40,000 developers working on apps for health care, retail and other industries.

“This is an important move for the IBM Watson effort,” Austin said in an e-mail. “If IBM executes well, this move shores up IBM’s efforts to build an ecosystem around Watson and it has the promise of making Watson-based solution delivery faster and cheaper.”

Alchemy plans to stay in Denver, where founder Elliot Turner moved with his wife last decade. He was attracted by the support for startups, lifestyle and even access to capital, raising $2 million two years ago locally from Access Venture Partners.

“The opportunity to join IBM has an amplifying affect,” said Turner, who founded the company in 2005. “As Steve said, it’s the rocket fuel.”

Tamara Chuang: 303-954-1209, tchuang@denverpost.com or twitter.com/Gadgetress