Amazon.com Inc. has been trying to shove its Alexa voice assistant into anything with room for a speaker and microphone, from TVs and Bluetooth speakers to cars and whatever the heck the Dash Wand is, but Aiqudo Inc. says voice assistants such as Alexa or Google Assistant don’t have many voice commands that are actually useful.

The San Jose, California startup is offering up its own add-on service to make smart assistants even smarter. Today the company announced that it has raised $5.2 million in Series A funding, with Atlantic Bridge Capital as its sole investor.

Founded this year, Aiqudo offers an AI-powered “voice-to-actions” platform called Q, which acts as a sort of translator between voice assistants and other apps. With Q, users can issue app-specific voice commands such as “What is popular on Reddit?” or “show the national news.” Q seems to work similarly to apps such as IFTTT and Tasker, which allow users to create powerful app automations.

“With Aiqudo, people can just speak and get things done. They can use their voices to execute actions in the mobile apps they love instead of using top-down tree menus and tapping through a series of screens,” Aiqudo co-founder and Chief Executive John Foster said in a statement. “We make virtual assistants far more useful and compelling to consumers because people have a much broader set of mobile app options to control by voice instead of being forced to use the walled gardens and proprietary offerings on the virtual assistant market today.”

Aiqudo said its platform is easy for developers to pick up and create their own voice integrations because it uses natural language commands rather than relying on custom application programming interfaces. The company said developers can take advantage of Q’s voice command features without users having to install additional apps.

“Our new Voice-to-Action platform will make it easy for virtual assistants to make more mobile apps available to consumers so they’re free to use the apps they prefer in a less clunky way,” Foster said. “Developers can also get in the game quickly and voice-enable more apps without having to develop complex technology in-house.”

In addition to its funding announcement, Aiqudo also revealed today that it has acquired Irish AI startup Sophia, which uses machine learning to improve digital advertising. The Sophia team will remain in Ireland and will support Aiqudo’s AI development.

You can watch a video of Aiqudo’s Q platform in action:

Photo: Aiqudo