While Microsoft is clearly acquiring a keyboard app, the deal means a lot more for the software giant. The SwiftKey team will join Microsoft's research team and it's clear the company admires the artificial intelligence work SwiftKey has produced with its latest Android keyboard that uses a neural network instead of its standard algorithms when predicting words. "We love SwiftKey's technology and we love the team that Jon and Ben have formed," says Harry Shum, head of Microsoft Research. We believe that together we can achieve orders of magnitude greater scale than either of us could have achieved independently.

Microsoft's latest acquisition is yet another example of the company's continued to push to provide software and services on iOS and Android. Microsoft acquired Sunrise and Acompli, and the company has been producing a number of custom iOS and Android apps as part of its Garage program.