Microsoft drops $250m on SwiftKey to deepen AI creds

Windows Phone may be on its last legs, but that isn’t going to stop Microsoft dropping serious amounts of money on mobile products.

Its latest strategy on this front involves acquiring the company behind intelligent keyboard app SwiftKey. According to TechCrunch, Microsoft is set to drop US250-million on the London-based startup.

As the Redmond-based giant notes in an official blog post, SwiftKey software keyboard and SDK powers more than 300 million Android and iOS devices.

Read more: Microsoft acquires technology assets from Event Zero to enhance Skype for Business Online

The deal, which is all cash and will go through immediately, is understood to have been in the works for some time now.

In its blog post, Microsoft says that it will continue pushing out updates to SwitKey’s Android and iOS apps but will also use the underlying technology in its own core product set.

That could prove to be a very positive move. Swiftkey founders Dr. Ben Medlock (CTO) and Jon Reynolds (CEO) are doing amazing work in the AI space and even worked on a project aimed at enhancing the communication system used by professor Stephen Hawking.

“We love SwiftKey’s technology and we love the team that Jon and Ben have formed,” says Microsoft Executive Vice President for Technology and Research Harry Shum. “That’s why today I’m excited to welcome the company’s employees to Microsoft. We believe that together we can achieve orders of magnitude greater scale than either of us could have achieved independently”.