Steve Kovach, reporting for Tech Insider:

Apple now has the tech in place to give its digital assistant a big boost thanks to a UK-based company called VocalIQ it bought last year.

According to a source familiar with VocalIQ’s product, it’s much more robust and capable than Siri’s biggest competitors like Google Now, Amazon’s Alexa, and Microsoft’s Cortana. In fact, it was so impressive that Apple bought VocalIQ before the company could finish and release its smartphone app. After the acquisition, Apple kept most of the VocalIQ team and let them work out of their Cambridge office and integrate the product into Siri.

A lot has been said in the last few days about Apple, Siri and how the company is severely lacking against its competitors Amazon — which has Alexa, and Google — which has Google Now and has just announced Google Home at Google I/O a few days ago.

Reading about VocalIQ, I’m excited about WWDC now.