Samsung Acquires Siri Creators' Startup For Own Voice Assistant

Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. announced Wednesday the acquisition of a Silicon Valley startup founded by the co-creators of Siri, Apple Inc.'s voice assistant. The purchase price for San Jose, California-based Viv Labs Inc. , which has developed a new personal assistant akin to Siri, was not disclosed. Samsung said in a news release that it plans to incorporate Viv into a range of its electronics, similar to how Apple deploys Siri and Alphabet Inc. plans to use its Google Assistant in Android products. "Samsung offers us a unique opportunity to deliver a single conversational interface to the world's apps and services across a diverse range of products, at global scale," said Viv co-founder and Chief Executive Dag Kittlaus, who helped develop Siri along with fellow Viv co-founder Adam Cheyer. Apple bought Siri in 2010 and introduced it in the iPhone 4S in 2011; the technology has since been introduced across Apple's suite of products.