Maluuba, available on Android , allows the use of natural language commands to ask questions and create tasks without having to phrase those orders in a special way. Maluuba doesn’t respond with its own voice, but it makes up for that by connecting to 18 different services for answers and actions. Users can ask general web queries, set up calendar appointments, post to Twitter, Facebook or Foursquare, get info on local movies, restaurants or businesses and get directions.

The secret to Maluuba is that it relies on some very sophisticated natural language processing that uses a statistical base model, which is helpful in handling a number of different sectors. Maluuba then connects to a broad number of services through their APIs, allowing the app to not just produce search results but complete actions on behalf of the user. Google Calendar, Rotten Tomatoes, Wolfram Alpha, Yelp, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Weather Underground and Wikipedia are some of the APIs that Maluuba can access.

This approach, said co-founder Sam Pasupalak, allows Maluuba to expand to more domains faster than Siri and connects it to services like Facebook that Google might avoid for competitive reasons.

“Apple’s goal is to create the user experience on their phone but we want to connect to as many APIs as possible,” said Pasupalak. “In the future, the web won’t be a mash of links but APIs.”

Maluuba officially launched last week and is now rolling out a minor update Thursday that features a widget so users can start queries from their home page. That’s great for getting into the service faster without having to fire up the app.

Maluuba began as a project between three University of Waterloo students and in February it raised $2 million from Samsung Ventures. The company is now trying to expand to more topics to take on more actions for users. And it’s planning its own SDK to welcome other developers who want to integrate with Maluuba.

The market is full of Siri wannabes trying to one-up Apple. But Maluuba shows a lot of promise in the time I’ve played with it. It’s got a very clean experience and can handle a whole lot of actions. And Maluuba should only get smarter as it plugs in more APIs. It doesn’t have the Slick presentation of Siri or Google Now’s ability to anticipate what information you’ll need ahead of time. But it’s a solid personal assistant that can give both the services a little run for their money.

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The financing was made public through an SEC filing spotted by VentureBeat earlier today. The investors involved weren’t listed in the filing, but a YuMe spokesperson confirmed to GigaOM that both Samsung and Translink were the principal backers of the round. Previous YuMe investors include Accel Partners, Menlo Ventures and Khosla Ventures, and the startup has raised a total of $63 million since being founded in 2007.

Samsung’s investment comes as YuMe is betting more on its connected device strategy, which includes the release of a software development kit (SDK) for connected TVs. The company also announced a partnership with LG earlier this month through which it will serve up video ads into applications on the consumer electronic manufacturer’s Internet-connected TVs and Blu-ray players.

As more publishers develop apps for connected TVs, the need for robust ad-serving platform will be necessary to help monetize their content. With strategic investment from Intel and Samsung, YuMe is no doubt hoping to cash in on that demand as the market matures.

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