In accordance with an example embodiment, large scale category classification based on sequence semantic embedding and parallel learning is described. In one example, one or more closest matches are identified by comparison between (i) a publication semantic vector that corresponds to at least part of the publication, the publication semantic vector based on a first machine-learned model that projects the at least part of the publication into a semantic vector space, and (ii) a plurality of category vectors corresponding to respective categories from a plurality of categories.