Microsoft Boosts Its Chatbot Future By Acquiring Wand Labs

On Monday, Microsoft made headlines by plunking down 26 billion for LinkedIn. Now it's announcing its second acquisition of the week: For an undisclosed sum, the company has bought Wand Labs, a Silicon Valley-based startup that declares its mission is "to tear down app walls, integrate your services in chat, and make them work together so you can do more with less taps." Founded in 2013, Wand is tiny--it has just seven employees--and, though no longer in stealth mode, is hardly a household name. The iOS and Android apps it built haven't yet reached general availability, and now they never will, as their creators put them aside and contribute to the greater Microsoftian effort. But for all the ways that this acquisition is different than the mammoth LinkedIn deal, both transactions are pieces of the same puzzle.