It also meant Facebook was blocked from collecting any speech data to train its voice technology further. The problem was that building voice technology takes much longer than half a year due to its sheer complexity. When Facebook bought the startup and its staff of several dozen researchers for an undisclosed sum, it sparked excited speculation that Facebook would start working on some sort of competitor to Apple’s Siri, or more. In 2014, Facebook bought Wit.ai, a company that specialized in that second component of voice tech, natural-language understanding. Facebook didn’t make that call with voice technology until it was too late.

Source: Forbes October 30, 2018 10:52 UTC