Our Solutions

For more information, please see our Solutions sections.

Q. What is Primal?
A. Primal is the first computational semantic engine that synthesizes data about individual interests in real-time. These interest networks are used as machine-readable inputs to a series of automated processes and virtual assistants to get things done faster, easier, and simpler than with today’s complex and costly solutions.

Q. What products are you powering?
A. Due to the confidential nature of our work with customers, we are not at liberty to share specifics of our product development projects. We are happy to discuss broader market opportunities to support your innovation process.

Q. What is an interest network?
A. An interest network describes your interests in a machine-readable form. The connections between individual interests describe what those interests mean in ways that can be processed by computers. Primal synthesizes interest networks to power more personalized products and services.

Q. What is the difference between a social network and Primal’s interest networks?
A. Social networks are organized around connections between people. Interest networks are organized around interests. Primal’s interest networks connect information, services, and people based on their individual interests. They support the development of new value-added services and powerful collaboration experiences.

Q. How is Primal different from other semantic technologies?
A. Most semantic technologies are focused on semantic analysis: deriving semantic data from existing expressions of knowledge, such as documents or consumer activity. The semantic data is prepared in advance and retrieved as needed. Conversely, Primal is focused on semantic synthesis: generating semantic data that represents knowledge that was not previously encoded in some other form. Primal synthesizes its semantic data in real-time to describe the interests and intentions of consumers.

Q. What can I do with Primal that I can’t do with other semantic technologies?
A. Unlike other semantic technologies, Primal doesn’t require existing data or new infrastructure investments. This makes Primal a simpler, more accessible, and more scalable solution. Further, the ability to personalize to consumer interests in real-time enables breakthrough product innovations.

Q. How is Primal’s technology different from natural language processing?
A. Natural language technologies process the natural languages that people use to speak and write. Primal generates knowledge representations in the language of semantics, not natural language. The language of semantics is encoded in data models such as taxonomies, ontologies, and controlled vocabularies.

Q. How is Primal different from a search engine?
A. Primal does not index and retrieve content directly. Instead, Primal synthesizes interest networks that can be used by existing search engines to help retrieve and organize documents. Primal’s data allows computers to operate search engines on behalf of consumers, making the search experience more productive.

Q. Where does Primal store the interest data of individuals? How is the software installed?
A. Primal is a computational engine that operates as a cloud-based data service (DaaS). The interest data it produces is also stored securely and privately in the cloud. Consumers and customers are free to review, modify, and delete their data at any time. There is no software installation required. Other distribution options are available if your product requirements are more complex.

Q. How many consumers can Primal support?
A. As a run-time and cloud-based data service, Primal scales horizontally to operate at Internet scale, right now. Alternatively, we can provide bulk data as an off-line service, if you prefer to provision Primal’s interest data in advance of your product or service delivery.

Q: Do I need to worry about copyright?
A: No. Primal accesses information from the open Internet and displays text and image summaries in a manner that’s compliant with copyright laws, in much the same way that all the major search engines operate. Individual content sources are subject to their own terms of use.

Our Technology

For more information, please see our Technology section.

Q. What is semantic data?
A. Semantic data is data that describes the meaning of things in a formal, machine-readable manner. Primal synthesizes semantic data to describe the interests of consumers.

Q. Where does Primal get its data?
A. Primal generates (or synthesizes) semantic data, it doesn’t provision the data in advance. Much like natural language is generated from a vocabulary of words and a grammar, Primal synthesizes semantic data using proprietary vocabularies of atomic data (analogous to words) and knowledge generation rules (analogous to a grammar). These vocabularies of atomic semantics are derived from sources like lexicons, encyclopedias, and dictionaries.

Q. How can Primal trust the knowledge represented in its data?
A. Primal is representing the highly subjective and individual interests of consumers, not universal facts. We measure performance in the improved productivity of the products powered by this data.

Q. Does Primal learn more about the interests of consumers over time?
A. Yes, Primal can maintain separate data stores representing the interests of each consumer of your product or service. Primal adapts and maintains the semantic data based on these past interactions, improving the fidelity of these interest networks over time.

Q. Is Primal an example of artificial intelligence?
A. Primal’s computational intelligence intersects with the broad field of artificial intelligence in areas such as knowledge representation and machine learning.

Q. Does Primal “think” like a person does?
A. Primal simulates the activities of knowledge engineers—people that organize and structure information for machine processing.

Q. How would I integrate Primal into my product or service?
A. Primal is unparalleled in its ease-of-use. A simple RESTful API is used request interest data for a specific context, such as a consumer’s query, user profile, or a document. Primal’s data response is structured using the most commonly used formats (including JSON, RSS, XML, RDF, and XHTML) and open vocabularies. This makes it easy to integrate the data within your product or service.

Q: What content sources does Primal support?
A: Out of the box, Primal provides access to dozens of the most sought-after sources on the Internet, such as Wikipedia, Flickr, Yahoo News, Bing, Twitter, and Amazon. We continue to add new content sources as requested from our customers and consumers. Our extensible architecture makes it easy to add any content source you need.

Q. How does Primal retrieve content from sources like Twitter or Bing?
A. Primal retrieves content in real-time using the data services and APIs exposed by these third-party services. These mechanisms provide a simple means for adding new content sources.

Q. Does Primal technology work with multimedia (videos, photos, audio)?
A. Yes, Primal integrates seamlessly with a variety of content sources, applications, and devices. It requires only sparse textual annotations of these multimedia objects, such as titles, captions, or descriptions.

Working with Primal

For more information, please see our Leadership and Contact information.

Q. How does Primal price these solutions?
A. Primal is an enabling technology and as such we do not have direct-to-consumer pricing. Our delivery model is flexible enough to accommodate your business model. Please call business development or BizDev@primal.com to investigate a partnership.