Microsoft Acquires Messaging App Developer Wand Labs

microsoftMicrosoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) has acquired Wand Labs, a US-based messaging app developer.

The amount of the deal was not disclosed.

The acquisition allow the software giant to accelerate its vision and strategy for “Conversation as a Platform“, which CEO Satya Nadella introduced at the Build 2016 conference in March 2016.

Founded in 2013 by CEO Vishal Sharma, Wand Labs has expertise in semantic ontologies, services mapping, third-party developer integration and conversational interfaces. The company’s technology and team* aim now to strengthen Microsoft’s position in the emerging era of conversational intelligence, which combines human language and advanced machine intelligence to connect people to knowledge, information, services and other people in relevant and natural ways as well as extend the power of the Bing, Microsoft Azure, Office 365 and Windows platforms.

Wand Labs will be shutting down the service but some elements of it will be found of their work in the future.

According to the web site, beyond Sharma, the team includes COO Elhum Amjadi, VP of Product Joseph Huang and engineers Stephen Flanagan, Heine Frifeldt, Etienne Goulet-Lang and Carsten Avenhaus.

FinSMEs

19/06/2016

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