Amazon says its Alexa+ voice assistant is now available to customers in Brazil. It’s part of an ongoing rollout of the upgraded Alexa that began earlier this year, and is scheduled to continue into 2027, Amazon announced Thursday (June 18). “Powered by generative AI, the new Alexa+ represents a...
Oura Health is acquiring Finland-based startup Doublepoint Technologies as the smart ring maker moves to add gesture and voice interactions to future versions of its wearable devices, Bloomberg News reported Thursday (March 5). The deal brings gesture-recognition technology developed by Doublepoint into Oura’s product roadmap,...
LiveKit raised $100 million in a Series C funding round to accelerate the growth of its developer platform for building voice, video and physical artificial intelligence agents. The round values the company at $1 billion, LiveKit co-founder and CEO Russ d’Sa said in a Thursday...
Artificial intelligence-powered insights, voice ordering, bitcoin payments and a mobile app for small businesses are among Square’s latest offerings for local businesses. Square announced these new products Wednesday (Oct. 8) during the company’s biannual Square Releases product launch event. New intelligence capabilities that have been...
October 27, 2026
Voice commerce has faced the same obstacles for a decade, including turning spoken requests into accurate orders, verifying customer identity and completing payments without delays. In 2016, PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster wrote about the potential of voice-enabled payments through Amazon’s Alexa. What Alexa could not yet prove was that the device knew who was talking […]
March 07, 2025
In 2011, Apple debuted Siri, the world’s first digital assistant embedded in a smartphone. It was revolutionary in its functionality and technology. For the first time, users could talk to...
March 07, 2024
Despite advancements in voice commerce, the technology still faces challenges driving penetration in the retail sector. By the Numbers PYMNTS Intelligence’s study last April, “Tracking the Digital Payments Takeover: Catching...
February 28, 2024
It’s lights out for Apple’s dream of entering the electric vehicle (EV) marketplace. A Tuesday (Feb. 27) report reveals that the Cupertino, California, personal computer and smartphone pioneer is abandoning...
June 18, 2026
Amazon says its Alexa+ voice assistant is now available to customers in Brazil. It’s part of an ongoing rollout of the upgraded Alexa that began earlier this year, and is scheduled to continue into 2027, Amazon announced Thursday (June 18). “Powered by generative AI, the new Alexa+ represents a meaningful leap forward from the original Alexa—it’s smarter, more conversational, […]
March 05, 2026
Oura Health is acquiring Finland-based startup Doublepoint Technologies as the smart ring maker moves to add gesture and voice interactions to future versions of its wearable devices, Bloomberg News reported...
January 22, 2026
LiveKit raised $100 million in a Series C funding round to accelerate the growth of its developer platform for building voice, video and physical artificial intelligence agents. The round values...
October 08, 2025
Artificial intelligence-powered insights, voice ordering, bitcoin payments and a mobile app for small businesses are among Square’s latest offerings for local businesses. Square announced these new products Wednesday (Oct. 8)...