China’s search giant Baidu has made another acquisition to continue its push into artificial intelligence, and specifically carving out a place for itself as a platform for developers who want to create chatbots and other services based on natural language technology. It has acquired Kitt.ai, a profitable startup based out of Seattle that has developed a framework to build and power chatbots and voice-based applications across multiple platforms and devices. Terms of the deal — which was announced on stage at Baidu’s developer event in Beijing, and also confirmed in a blog post from Kitt.ai — are not being disclosed.
Kitt.ai has been around since 2014, but it appears that it had only disclosed a seed round of funding of an unspecified size as a startup. Its backers were Amazon’s Alexa Fund and the Founders Co-op.
Importantly, the company was growing and thriving. It has paying customer across four continents “and we are profitable,” co-founder Xuchen Yao notes in the blog post. Kitt.ai’s tech powers apps for smart phones, speakers, appliances, web chat, cars, homes, conference rooms, offices, hospitals, “and even telephone lines.” Yao and his two other co-founders…