In order to accelerate its AI initiatives, tech giant Microsoft has acquired Texas-based XOXCO, a conversational Artificial Intelligence (AI) and bot development company.
Microsoft Acquires XOXCO
The company, raised in 2008, offers services based on conversational Artificial Intelligence. With the acquisition, the number of AI related firms that the Microsoft acquired this year reaches to four.
The company said in its official statement
“Today, we are announcing we have signed an agreement to acquire XOXCO, a software product design and development studio known for its conversational AI and bot development capabilities.”
XOXCO owns the credit of creating Howdy, the first commercially available bot for Slack which allows users to schedule meetings. With the help of Howdy, businesses can create custom bots, including bots for customer support, bots for marketing and bots for work chat.
XOXCO is also the brain behind Botkit, a collection of development tools for users working on GitHub. Hundreds and thousands of developers use Botkit worldwide.
Microsoft’s Bot Framework is already available as a service on GitHub and Azure currently supports over 3,60,000 developers. With XOXCO on board, Microsoft will get an edge on its approach of democratizing AI development, conversation and dialog while integrating conversational experiences where people communicate.
The amount of acquisition is still unknown. The year has been very active for the tech giant as Microsoft acquired conversational AI-focused Semantic Machines, reinforcement learning and simulation vendor Bonsai and deep learning and AI model specialist Lobe.
Above all, GitHub happened to be the biggest acquisition for Microsoft that company acquired in October.
Microsoft Acquires XOXCO
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