The Weather Company

The Weather Company, a division of IBM, helps people make informed decisions about the weather. The company offers accurate personalized weather data, as well as the results of their analysis to millions of consumers and thousands of organizations through an API, its own division of commercial solutions and digital products of subsidiaries Weather Channel (weather.com) and Weather Underground (wunderground.com).

The Weather Company is preparing tens of billions of weather reports a day. The company's product list includes a weather app for all major mobile platforms; a network of personal weather stations, including 250 thousand points; website; IoT data platform; business solutions.

The Weather Company provides data, technology platforms, and services to companies working in aviation, power, insurance, media, and public sector organizations to improve decision-making and weather response.

Internet audience

2018: Top 20 internet giants by size of internet audience

Internet companies by audience size

History

2023: IBM sold Weather half the price it bought

On August 22, 2023, IBM Corporation announced the sale of assets of the Weather Company division specializing in meteorological services. The buyer is the investment company Francisco Partners.

IBM acquired Weather Company in 2015 for $2 billion. It is noted that this company serves an average of about 415 million users per month, and more than 2 thousand enterprises and organizations are its corporate clients.

IBM sold weather company Weather half the price it bought. She lost $1 billion

Under the terms of the signed agreement, Francisco Partners acquires Weather Company's consumer assets, Weather Channel's mobile and cloud digital services, including Weather.com, Weather Underground and Storm Radar. In addition, the contract covers the corporate business of Weather Company - products for television companies and broadcasters, media, air carriers, as well as advertising technologies and data processing solutions for other industries.

The amount of the transaction was not officially disclosed, but, according to available information, it is approximately $1 billion. Thus, IBM sold assets half as cheaper as it bought them, and lost about $1 billion because of this. The deal is expected to close by the end of the first quarter of 2024, subject to regulatory approval.

It is also said that IBM will retain some of the resources of the Weather Company: this, in particular, is a business in the field of sustainability software, including the Environmental Intelligence Suite (EIS) platform. In addition, IBM will have access to weather data that is used to train artificial intelligence models. After the sale, Weather Company will develop new consumer services that will help users understand how the weather affects various aspects of their lives.^[1]

2015: Takeover by IBM Corporation

At the end of October 2015, IBM announced its decision to acquire The Weather, its mobile, cloud and B2B web resources, including WSI, weather.com, Weather Underground, and The Weather Company's trademark from a consortium of private investor companies The Blackstone Group, Bain Capital and NBC Universal.^[2]

The transaction was closed on January 29, 2016.