Dive Brief:

• Amazon recently acquired data visualization company Graphiq, according to a Los Angeles Times report based on unnamed sources.

• Graphiq collects and analyzes data that helps users to find and compare a wide variety of products.

• The deal may have been worth about $50 million, according to The Los Angeles Times' sources. Neither Graphiq or Amazon commented.

Dive Insight:

Now that Amazon and its competitors have proven there is demand for virtual home assistants, they are in a race to improve their individual technologies to make their virtual assistants the most useful.

For Amazon, Garphiq's value is in its billions of data points. That type of data could come in handy for consumers looking to use Amazon's Echo personal assistant to shop for and compare various products.

An April assessment of digital personal assistants conducted by Stone Temple found Alexa is not yet quite as smart as its competitors, especially Google. And Apple and Microsoft plan to reveal  personal assistant products soon, giving Amazon some added competition.

The winner of the personal virtual assistant is likely to see wide adoption in the enterprise space. Businesses are experimenting with how to incorporate conversational UIs into the workplace to help to simple tasks, alleviating busy work which then allows people time and energy to focus on the bigger picture.