Facebook is acquiring Wit.ai, a speech-recognition startup whose technology could give the social network new ways to let users connect verbally.
Wit.ai, less than two years old, has a platform that lets outside developers incorporate speech recognition into apps, home devices such as thermostats, and even robots. More than 6,000 developers have used its technology to build apps and devices that people can talk to, the Palo Alto, California-based company says.
It’s unclear how exactly its technology will be incorporated into Facebook, though it’s likely to help Facebook compete against Apple’s Siri and Google voice search. “Wit.ai has built an incredible yet simple natural language processing API that has helped developers turn speech and text into actionable data. We’re excited to have them onboard,” Facebook said in a statement. Financial terms were not disclosed.
