Microsoft's AI wish granted with Genee buy

Vendor will integrate scheduling system into Office 365, shutting down original on 1 September

Microsoft has acquired intelligent scheduling system Genee for an undisclosed amount in the hopes of making Office 365 more intuitive.

The deal, announced by both Microsoft and Genee in their respective blogs yesterday, will see Genee integrated into Office 365. The original version of the scheduling service will be shut down on 1 September.

Genee was founded in 2014 by Ben Cheung and Charles Lee, who plan to join Microsoft when the deal is finalised. The scheduling vendor raised $1.45m (£1.1m) in August 2015 from investors led by Aspiration Growth.

Genee provides a virtual assistant for scheduling appointments, which can interpret voice commands and turn them into calendar appointments.

The acquisition follows Microsoft's $26.2bn purchase of LinkedIn in June.

"It has been two and a half years since we let Genee out of the bottle," said Lee. "In our drive to deliver large productivity gains through intelligent scheduling co-ordination and optimisation, we often found ourselves at the forefront of technology involving natural language processing, artificial intelligence, and chat bots.

"We consider Microsoft to be the leader in personal and enterprise productivity, AI, and virtual assistant technologies, so we look forward to bringing our passion and expertise to a team that is committed to delivering cutting-edge language and intelligence services."