Ask Ziggy, the Windows Phone counterpart to Apple’s voice-activated personal assistant programme Siri, has closed a $5m round of funding with a “publicly traded multinational corporation”.
Currently only available on Windows Phone, Ask Ziggy plans to use the funding to be able to deliver the natural speech search engine to nearly all Android, Apple, and Microsoft devices by the end of Q3 this year.
More specific details on the backers of the funding round were not released.
Ask Ziggy appeared in January after CEO Shai Leib developed it single-handedly with a mind to develop a more trivia-based and vocal version of Siri. According to Leib’s LinkedIn, Leib was previously a project manager at search engine Ask.com, and also a lead software architect for SAP.
Ask Ziggy also announced that they will be releasing an SDK for developers looking to leverage the virtual assistant.
“Each major funding event is a milestone in the growth of a rapidly developing company like Ask Ziggy. Although we’ve had prior key investments via Sunbelt Technologies Management LLC, when major publicly traded multinational companies begin to recognize the value of Ask Ziggy’s Cloud-based contextual search solutions, as was the case with this strategic investment, we have to celebrate,” said Ask Ziggy CEO Shai Leib.
He added: “Ask Ziggy’s Natural Speech search engine empowers and expands the user experience and convenience for all mobile devices, not merely cell phones. Speaking directly into a device and getting a voice reply, with zero typing required, is here at last. This funding will now enable Ask Ziggy to deliver multi-language, accent independent, Natural Speech Personal Assistant Apps running on all devices, including cellular handsets, tablets and even computing headsets, which will immediately change our world.”