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Samsung Elec acquires Greek voice recognition startup Innoetics

Collected: 2017.07.13

Distributed: 2017.07.17

Source: Go Direct

Samsung Electronics Co., which has been empowering software capabilities through mergers and acquisitions, has bought Greek voice recognition startup Innoetics to beef up its voice-enabled services led by self-developed assistant Bixby.

According to multiple media outlets, Samsung Electronics closed a deal to purchase full stake in the Greek startup through M&A hunter Samsung Global Innovation Center. The company has not issued a separate statement on the deal, possibly because of the smaller scale.

Innoetics was founded in 2006 by four Greek scientists and specializes in text-to-speech technology. It has seven staff and developed expressive voice that can read aloud audio books and narrate fairy tales.

Bixby, developed with the aid of Viv Labs - a California-based startup Samsung Electronics purchased in October 2016 - debuted on the Galaxy S8 series that were released in May, but its versions in languages other than Korean have been delayed due to technical difficulties.

The Korean tech giant hopes to borrow Innoetics’ capabilities to perfect Bixby. Innoetics is said to be able to support 19 different languages.

By Lee Dong-in

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