Microsoft is in advanced talks to acquire Nuance Communications, an artificial intelligence company whose speech recognition technology contributed to its development Apple’s Siri virtual assistant, for a whopping $ 16 billion, a source familiar with the matter said Reuters
The deal price being negotiated could value Nuance at about $ 56 a share, the source said, roughly 23% premium compared to the stock’s closing price on Friday. They added that an official announcement could come as early as Monday.
A source who spoke to Bloomberg, who first reported news of a possible deal on Sunday, said negotiations are underway and warned they could still fall apart.
While not exactly a household name, Nuance’s AI and speech recognition software is used across a range of industries, from healthcare to automotive, and helped lay the foundation for the technology that powers Apple’s voice assistant.
Neither Microsoft nor Nuance have publicly confirmed these conversations, so it’s best to take this with a grain of salt for now. However, the two companies do have a bit of history working together. In 2019, Microsoft announced partnered with Nuance to develop technology that allows physicians to record conversations with their patients during visits and automatically transfer that information to electronic health records.
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“The partnership with Microsoft will accelerate our ability to jointly solve healthcare’s most pressing challenges,” said Mark Benjamin at the time, CEO of Nuance. “The ambient technologies we will deliver together can improve productivity and professional satisfaction, while enabling physicians to focus on what they do best: taking care of patients.”
Rumor has it that Microsoft is spending a bit at the moment. It also reportedly looks at the gaming-focused chat platform Disagreement for more than $ 10 billion just months after it won the video game holding ZeniMax MediaIf this Nuance deal goes ahead, it would be one of Microsoft’s largest acquisitions to date, following the purchase of LinkedIn in 2016 for $ 26.2 billion.