Apple has reportedly acquired speech recognition company Novauris Technologies

Apple is looking to improve its Siri voice-recognition assistant through the acquisition of Novauris Technologies, according to TechCrunch. The deal appears to have taken place last year.

Novauris had built a technology called “NovaSearch” that processed voice input at the phrase level, rather than a word or sequence-of-words. It is capable of matching up data in a set of over 245 million items without having to track grammar.

Former Novauris CEO Yoon Kim now works as a manager on Apple’s Siri team, according to LinkedIn. Novauris had close ties to Dragon Systems, which produced the speech recognition system that Nuance now uses.

➤ Speech Recognition Pioneer Novauris Bought By Apple, Team Now Works On Siri [TechCrunch]

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