Microsoft has acquired messaging app developer Wand Labs for an undisclosed sum. The deal is part of Microsoft’s bigger strategy in developing its “conversation as a platform.”
As a result of the acquisition, the Wand Labs team will join Microsoft’s Bing engineering and platform team to work on intelligent agents and chat bots. Wand Labs was founded by Vishal Sharma in 2013 and is involved in developing in areas specific to Conversation as a Platform.
David Ku, corporate VP said in a company blog post,
This acquisition accelerates our vision and strategy for Conversation as a Platform, which Satya Nadella introduced at our Build 2016 conference in March. Wand Labs’ technology and talent will strengthen our position in the emerging era of conversational intelligence, where we 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.
Earlier this week, Microsoft acquired LinkedIn for a whopping $26.2 billion.