Many of the tech industry’s biggest players are currently working to address the chatbot trend, but few are investing more into the effort than Microsoft. The company joined the fray early on with Cortana and is now doubling down by acquiring a low-called startup called Wand Labs Inc. that has developed its own virtual assistant for mobile devices.

The software attempts to spare users the hassle of switching between apps by making it possible to interact with every service  on their phones through a centralized chat window. The built-in bot can be instructed to find a restaurant on Yelp, add a song to an iTunes playlist and even change the settings on connected devices like the Nest Thermostat. It’s an appealing value proposition, but Redmond appears to be more interested in the Wand team. Microsoft veep David Ku dedicated half the blog post in which he announced the acquisition to praising founder Vishal Sharma and his 7-person team.

Before founding the startup, the entrepreneur spent seven years at Alphabet Inc., where he lead the development of an early virtual assistant called Jacob that went on to become part of Google Now. Fast Company reports that Vishal and his team will now join Microsoft’s knowledge graph group, where they’re focus on enhancing the natural-language processing capabilities of services like Cortana. Wand’s service, meanwhile, will be shutting down.

However, the beta testers and other mobile device owners who were looking forward to using the technology have some reason for optimism. Vishal hinted in a statement on Wand’s website that “familiar elements” from the service will arrive to Microsoft products later down the line, though he didn’t specify a time frame. Redmond likewise decided to keep a close lid on the acquisition details and did not disclose the amount it paid for the startup.

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