Wit.ai, the Y Combinator startup, that has been working on an open and extensible natural language platform all the while helping developers to build applications and devices that turns speech into actionable data, announced earlier this week, its acquisition by Facebook.

“It is an incredible acceleration in the execution of our vision. Facebook has the resources and talent to help us take the next step. Facebook’s mission is to connect everyone and build amazing experiences for the over 1.3 billion people on the platform – technology that understands natural language is a big part of that, and we think we can help,” said a blog post making the announcement.

Wit.ai’s expertise could bolster Facebook’s strategy towards voice control development tools alongside its Parse development platform all the while assisting “with voice-to-text input for Messenger”, and helping “improve Facebook’s understanding of the semantic meaning of voice, and create a Facebook app you can navigate through speech,” points out TechCrunch.

Founded 18 months ago, Wit.ai already has more than 6000 developers on its team who have built hundreds of apps and devices. It is also reported that the platform will remain open and free for everyone.

Read more here.

Follow @DataconomyMedia



(Image credit: wit.ai)