Rumors abound today that Powerset is getting acquired by Microsoft for about $100m.  If this is true, I think it’s good news for its high profile investors, albeit at a lower valuation that they must have expected.   This one almost smells like a bailout by MSFT. 

Powerset set out with high expectations around semantic search and gradually ended up as a Wikipedia search tool.  There’s probably more behind the scenes in terms of technology, but if an agile startup with Silicon Valley credentials and a geek-skewed early audience could not present enough differentiation to the search user, how will Microsoft, with an immediate comparison to Google?

All eyes must be on Hakia now.