Microsoft acquires chat app Wand Labs

USA: Microsoft has acquired messaging app developer Wand Labs- a startup founded in 2013 by CEO Vishal Sharma that specializes in chatbots and messaging apps, for an undisclosed amount.

The acquisition accelerates Microsoft's vision and strategy for Conversation as a Platform, an area which Wand Labs is working on already.

"Our deep experience with semantics, messaging and authority are a natural fit for the work already underway at Microsoft, especially in the area of intelligent agents and cognitive services," said Vishal Sharma.

Microsoft is working to bring together the power of human language with advanced machine intelligence — connecting people to knowledge, information, services and other people in more relevant and natural ways. This is also a crucial aspect for Office 365, Cortana and Bing to sustain in this emerging era of conversational intelligence.

"The Wand team’s expertise around semantic ontologies, services mapping, third-party developer integration and conversational interfaces make them a great fit to join the Bing engineering and platform team, especially with the work we’re doing in the area of intelligent agents and chat bots," said David Ku, Corporate Vice President, Information Platform Group in a blog post.