NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- IBM (IBM) - Get Report is giving Watson, its artificial intelligence computing system, a big boost with the acquisition of a company that will allow more developers to access Watson's technology.

The technology giant announced Wednesday it's acquiring Denver-based AlchemyAPI for an undisclosed amount, bringing in the contributions of 40,000 developers who have worked with AlchemyAPI. That will enable Watson to expand upon its knowledge and understand larger sets of data in various industries.

Analytics is one of five key areas that IBM has said it will focus on. The others are mobile, security, cloud technology and data.

"IBM continues to invest in Watson's core technology and cloud development platform, amplifying a robust Watson ecosystem where third-party organizations are creating new businesses and solutions powered by Watson," said Mike Rhodin, senior vice president of IBM's Watson project.

"Our ability to draw upon both internal and external sources of innovation, from IBM Research to acquisitions like AlchemyAPI, remain central to our strategy of bringing Watson to new markets, industries and regions," Rhodin said.

By buying AlchemyAPI, IBM expands upon the number of application programming interfaces, or APIs, that allow developers to build apps based off of Watson's back-end intelligence. The new APIs allow Watson to recognize new types of text and visual images, as well as to automatically detect, label and recognize important details from an image. 

There have been more than 7,000 apps built to date using Watson's technology.

The acquisition is done in part to keep developing IBM's analytics business, which brings in more than $17 billion in annual revenue. Watson does not materially contribute to that $17 billion.

CFO Martin Schroeter called Watson's current revenue draw "insignificant" at an investor conference in San Francisco on Tuesday.

Schroeter, who took took over the top financial spot at IBM in January of last year, highlighted three ways Watson will make money for IBM. He said APIs make up one of three key revenue drivers for Watson.