Microsoft announced that it will acquire an Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology and bot development company, XOXCO, for an undisclosed amount.
Texas-based XOXCO has been pioneering AI technology since 2013 and was responsible for creating Howdy, the first commercially available bot for Slack, which helps with meeting scheduling.
“They also developed Botkit, which provides the development tools used by hundreds of thousands of developers on GitHub. We have been working with XOXCO for years and have been inspired by this work,” said Lili Cheng, Corporate Vice President of Conversational AI at Microsoft.
Conversational AI technology is quickly becoming a way for businesses to engage with their employees and customers – from creating virtual assistants and redesigning customer interactions, to using conversational assistants to help employees communicate and collaborate better.
According to Gartner, “by 2020, conversational AI will be supported by more than 50% of large enterprises.”
The Microsoft Bot Framework, available as a service on Azure and GitHub, currently supports over 360,000 developers.
“With this acquisition, we continue to execute on our approach to democratizing conversational and conversational AI development and embedding that experience for users,” Cheng said.
Over the past six months, Microsoft has made several strategic acquisitions to accelerate the pace of AI development.
The acquisition of Semantic Machines in May brought a revolutionary new approach to conversational AI.
In July, it acquired Bonsai to help lower barriers to AI development by combining machine learning, reinforcement learning, and simulation.
In September, Microsoft acquired Lobe, a company that created a simple visual environment that empowers anyone to instantly develop and deploy deep learning and AI models, without writing code.
“The acquisition of GitHub in October demonstrates our belief in the power of communities to help drive the next wave of bot development,” Microsoft said.
