Apple Acquires Siri Assistant for iPhone

According to a pre-merger notification submitted to the Federal Trade Commission, Apple has acquired Siri, a personal assistant for the iPhone.

Siri lets you use speak to your iPhone and have it perform tasks such as get a taxi, book a table at a good steak house, or see who's playing at Madison Square Garden.

TechCrunch notes that the underlying technology was developed at SRI with $200 million worth of Darpa grants. Siri was spun off to commercialize it and bring it to consumers. It’s last funding round was led by Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing (a fact never disclosed before), who also is an investor in Facebook.


Its not clear if Apple intends to improve on the application and release it as part of the iPhone OS or whether they will simply integrate the technology into existing apps.

You can download Siri Assistant from the App Store for free.

Read More [Get Siri]