Photographer: Simon Dawson / Bloomberg
Photographer: Simon Dawson / Bloomberg
Microsoft Corp. is in advanced talks to purchase an artificial intelligence and speech technology company Nuance Communications Inc., according to people familiar with the matter.
A deal could be announced this week, the people said, asking not to be identified because the information is private. The price under discussion could value Nuance at around $ 56 a share, although terms could still change, one said.
That would put Nuance’s equity, which laid the foundation for the technology used in Apple Inc.’s Siri speech software, at about $ 16 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The price would be a 23% premium for Nuance by Friday’s close.
The talks are ongoing and the discussions can still fall apart, people said.
A Microsoft representative declined to comment. A Nuance spokesperson, based in Burlington, Massachusetts, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Shares of Nuance are up 3.4% this year, bringing the company to a market value of nearly $ 13 billion, but still tracking the 9.9% jump in the S&P 500 Index. Microsoft is up 15%.
Microsoft, with a market value of more than $ 1.93 trillion, remains active in deals. Last month, Bloomberg News reported that the software giant was in talks to acquire Discord Inc., a video game chat community, for more than $ 10 billion. It too purchased video game maker Zenimax Media Inc. for $ 7.5 billion in cash in a deal struck this year.
A deal for Nuance would be considered Microsoft’s second-largest acquisition, after just $ 24 billion Transaction with LinkedIn Corp. in 2016, according to data collected by Bloomberg.
Microsoft and Nuance have have been collaborating since 2019 on technologies to, for example, enable doctors to record voice conversations from patient visits and enter the data into electronic health records.