Diffbot, based in Palo Alto, CA is a young company and a promising new form of visual learning robot technology targeted at Web developers. With a fresh, $2 million injection of capital, Diffbot is poised to revolutionize the way we use the Web, from online publishing to medical training.

With broad business potential it’s no surprise that Diffbot earned the financial endorsement of a number of big names in the tech industry, including EarthLink founder Sky Datyon; Andy Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun Microsystems; Joi Ito, Director of MIT Media Lab; Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of YouSendit, and other top executives from Facebook, Twitter, and Yahoo as well as participation from Matrix Partners.

Diffbot is a robot capable of viewing and understanding Web content the same way humans do. Via computer vision, machine learning and natural language processing Diffbot can visually analyze layout—including tracking website changes—understand and extract content on any page and in any language, and generate related images, videos and cross-referenced tags.

About the author

Casey Nobile

Casey Nobile is the lead editor for Robotics Business Review’s RBR50 news, editorial and business segment. She is also contributing writer and editor for the publication’s News & Technology columns with special emphasis on breaking news coverage for science, technology and financial transactions. Casey is also editor and contributor for other in-house publications: Robotics Trends; RoboBusiness and RoboBusiness exhibit services.