Adobe Systems Inc. has acquired a New York startup focused on voice-activated software in a sign that it’s looking to ride the rise of smart assistants such as Amazon.com Inc.’s Alexa.

The company announced the purchase of Sayspring Inc., the startup in question, on Monday afternoon. The transaction closed on the same day, while the Sayspring team moved over to Adobe this morning to begin integrating the startup’s technology into the software giant’s portfolio.

Since its establishment in 2016, Sayspring has developed a set of tools designed to streamline the creation of voice apps for Alexa and Alphabet Inc.’s rival Google Assistant. The startup’s flagship offering is a platform that allows developers to test if their services respond to commands as expected without having to write any code. The product also provides the ability to transcribe interactions for later reference, as well as share projects with team members.

Sayspring has been offering the platform in three editions, two of which were paid. The startup plans to drop the premium versions and make the all features free “for the near term,” but it will require new users to request an invite.

There will be changes to the development roadmap as well. Sayspring plans to shut down one of its offerings, a service that lets developers record Alexa conversations for testing purposes, and has already discontinued another tool it had created to ease the management of a voice app’s audio files. The two products’ features will both be integrated into the startup’s flagship platform.

This focus on new feature development would suggest that Adobe intends to continue offering Sayspring as a standalone service. Going forward, the company will likely look to even bigger enhancements. 

To start, Adobe could integrate the platform with its marketing automation services to target brands interested in engaging consumers via Alexa and other smart assistants. Smart voice devices such as Amazon’s Echo speakers are an increasingly important marketing channel, with Juniper Research Ltd. projecting that 55 percent of U.S. households will have at least one such system by 2022.

Sayspring’s technology and expertise could also help Adobe incorporate voice controls directly into its products. Last year, the company released a video of a concept photo editing application that enables users to carry out tasks with spoken commands, a capability it may be looking to implement in Photoshop.

Image: midiman