Microsoft Buys Nuance Communications

[ThePointblank]

Another major Microsoft acquisition, this time purchasing Nuance Communications for about $20 billion:

 

Via Axios and Ars Technica:

 

https://www.axios.com/microsoft-readies-deal-frenzy-bbc807a2-fd5b-48a7-99d1-cf06d0a41547.html

 

Quote

Microsoft announced Monday it would buy Nuance Communications, a software company that focuses on speech recognition through artificial intelligence, in an all-cash transaction valued at $19.7 billion (including debt assumption).

 

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/04/microsoft-acquires-nuance-makers-of-dragon-speech-rec-for-16-billion/

 

Quote

Earlier today, Microsoft announced its plans to purchase Nuance for $56 per share—23 percent above Nuance's closing price last Friday. The deal adds up to a $16 billion cash outlay and a total valuation for Nuance of about $19.7 billion, including that company's assumed debt.

Nuance Communications is perhaps best well known for speech recognition software, in particular Dragon NaturallySpeaking, and being the core technology behind Apple's Siri voice recognition features.

 

This acquisition builds upon an existing Microsoft and Nuance partnership agreement from 2019 where both would cooperate to develop new artificial intelligence software for the healthcare sector, and Microsoft's purchase of Nuance means that it would give Microsoft access to Nuance's entire healthcare customer list and technology portfolio.

 

Nuance's current CEO is expected to remain with the company, and will join Microsoft, running Nuance as a Microsoft division.

 

To me, this probably explains why Microsoft is electing to ditch Cortana; they probably figured that buying out a potential competitor and acquiring their patents and research made far more sense than trying to home develop something, and moving into the AI software for healthcare, along with the existing high value customer list probably helped seal the deal.

[emosun]

Or a scarier way of saying it , "Microsoft just spent 20 billion to make sure they know exactly what people are saying"

[Rauten]

So now we have:

• NVidia with RTX Voice
• Intel with their bleeping (literally) project for voice chat
• Microsoft with this

Lots of interest lately in voice recognition through AI...

And these are also the guys that were in talks to potentially buy Discord - AI powered Discord in our future? perhaps?

[Arika]

4 hours ago, emosun said:

Or a scarier way of saying it , "they really don't want to kill cortana, she's sticking around to everyone's chagrin"

I think this is more accurate