Apache Stanbol is an open source modular software stack and reusable set of components for semantic content management. Apache Stanbol components are meant to be accessed over RESTful interfaces to provide semantic services for content management. Thus, one application is to extend traditional content management systems with (internal or external) semantic services.

Additionally, Apache Stanbol lets you create new types of content management systems with semantics at their core. The current code is written in Java and based on the OSGi component framework. Applications include extending existing content management systems with (internal or external) semantic services, and creating new types of content management systems with semantics at their core.

In 2008, the Salzburg Research led, as entity coordinator, a consortium of seven research partners and six industrial partners to the proposal of the IKS project with the aim of receiving funding by the European institutions under the 7th Framework Programme.

The consortium comprised

In January 2009, the Interactive Knowledge Stack (IKS) started partly funded by the European Commission to provide an "open source technology platform for semantically enhanced content management systems". IKS received €6.58m co-funding by the European Union for an overall project duration of 4 years, hence setting the project's end date by the end of 2012.

Apache Stanbol was founded in November 2010 by members the EU research project Interactive Knowledge Stack (IKS). It was the result of an ongoing discussion about how to ensure that the results, especially the developed software, of the IKS project would be available to vendors of content management systems (CMS) after the project’s official funding period ended in 2012. The members of the IKS project decided to initiate the Apache Stanbol project as part of the incubation program of the Apache Software Foundation (ASF).

One of the first code imports of Apache Stanbol was the so-called "Furtwangen IKS Semantic Engine" (FISE) which eventually became the Apache Stanbol Enhancer with its Enhancement Engines. Other contributions of code were the KReS (Knowledge Representation and Reasoning) and the RICK (Reference Infrastructure for Content and Knowledge) components. Later on followed the Contenthub, while KReS was split into the Apache Stanbol Ontology Manager and Reasoner components, and the RICK is today known as the Apache Stanbol Entityhub. From that moment Apache Stanbol was developed as an open source software project independent of the IKS research project.

On 15 November 2010 Apache Stanbol enters incubation.