Voice assistants such as Amazon.com Inc.’s Alexa are taking on an increasingly central role in the tech market. In a bid to catch up with the competition, Microsoft Corp. today announced several new alliances meant to widen the adoption of its rivaling Cortana bot.

The company is counting on the partnerships to achieve that by getting the virtual assistant onto more devices. Microsoft will work with Qualcomm Technologies Inc., Synaptics Inc., Tonly Electronics Holdings Ltd. and Allwinner Technology Co. Ltd. to develop reference designs aimed at making it easier for manufacturers to incorporate Cortana into their hardware.

The technology giant lags behind Amazon when it comes to the number of devices that support its platform. Alexa can be found in most of everything from fridges to coffee machines to, as of last week, even ceiling lights. Alphabet Inc.’s Google Assistant enjoys widespread adoption too. Among the partnerships that Microsoft announced today, the collaboration with Qualcomm may go the longest way toward narrowing the gap.

The chipmaker, whose silicon can be found in a significant portion of the world’s mobile devices, will add Cortana to its Smart Audio Platform. The offering provides a specially assembled bundle of hardware and software components that can be readily turned into a smart speaker. It promises to streamline the design process for manufacturers, which in turn allows products to be brought to market faster.

Amazon is taking a similar approach to widening the adoption of Alexa. Last week, the company unveiled a new development kit that combines specialized hardware components, including two sophisticated microphone arrays, with voice recognition algorithms.

The new Smart Audio Platform will enable Microsoft to take on Amazon in its home turf: the smart speaker market. That’s especially significant in light of Amazon’s plans to bring its Alexa-powered Echo speakers to the enterprise, which is a potentially major market for Cortana. Microsoft recently disclosed that it’s in the process of developing a “robust and scalable digital assistant experience” for Dynamics 365. 

The company is investing in other forms of artificial intelligence as well. A few days ago, for instance, Microsoft teamed up with Seattle-based Adaptive Biotechnologies Corp. to build a new AI-based blood testing system.

Image: Microsoft