Microsoft to acquire AI powered scheduling service Genee

Microsoft has announced that the company has signed an agreement to acquire Genee, which is an artificial intelligence power service. The agreement is all part of the Redmond Giant’s efforts to further the ambition of bringing intelligence into every digital experience.

Genee was officially started in 2014 and was co-founded by  Ben Cheung and Charles Lee. Overall, Genee is a technology which simplifies the time-consuming tasks of scheduling meetings. Under the hood, this was accomplished by use of natural language and processing and optimized decision-making algorithms.

As part of the deal, Ben Cheung and Charles Lee will join Microsoft. As a result, the Genee service will shut down on September 1, 2016 and Genee will no longer send useful reminder and agendas from your calendar.  All existing calendar entries created by Genee, however, will remain.

In a blog post about the acquisition, Cheung and Lee express gratitude for the community, and also look forward to what is ahead.

We thank all of you who participated in Genee’s private and public betas. The Genee team will take the valuable experiences and lessons that you taught us to Microsoft, where we’ll continue to build amazing next generation intelligent experiences…. 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.

So, what are your thoughts on this acquisition by Microsoft? How do you think Genee will fit into Microsoft’s ambitions? Let us know what you think by dropping us a comment below!