Amazon and Google are leading investments in hot voice-first startups - Business Insider

, the Assistant Investment program is separate from Alphabet's in-house venture funds, GV and Capital G. There's no cap on the overall amount of money that the Assistant Investment team can put to work to fund startups, according to the report, and the goals of the investments are strategic rather than to maximize returns.For voice startups, one tricky aspect of working with these corporate backers is the impact on choosing which voice assistant and associated devices to build on.

For some voice startups, like Drivetime, the best option is to play both sides of the field. The company is backed by Amazon and Google, helping it optimize its product for two crucial car-based platforms, Echo Auto and Android Auto. "Amazon had to open up the Skills Store. They envisioned the Skill Store before they even had a hardware product," Niko Vuori, CEO and cofounder of Alexa Fund portfolio company Drivetime, told Business Insider. "In order to make voice valuable over time, you need that developer community. The platform owners and tech giants needed to make their software and their ecosystem available to developers.

Vuori pointed to Apple's Siri as proof of what happens when a tech giant doesn't open up its underlying technology to the developer community. Amazon Alexa and Google Voice Assistant have both reached more customers through an array of devices, while Apple's Siri remains confined to what Vuori called "Apple's walled garden."But while tech giants duke it out over the biggest deal of the day, traditional venture capital has been noticeably absent from the industry.

"It's not atypical for new ecosystems to require some pump priming by the corporate incumbents that are building the products," Bernard said. "And then you get FOMO that comes with time and progress, and you're starting to see that now in the traditional VC world. It's not an unnatural sequence that we are starting to see.

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