In April 2021, Microsoft announced with great fanfare the acquisition of Nuance Communications, a company specializing in voice recognition. The operation is now finalized, has just indicated the staff of the Redmond firm, which specifies that the transaction has been the subject of a regulatory review at the global level. As a reminder, Nuance is an AI company specializing in speech recognition and related software and services.
Microsoft has paid $19.7 billion to add Nuance to its portfolio of companies, making it its third largest acquisition to date by the US giant, after that of Activision Blizzard ($68.7 billion). ) and LinkedIn ($26.2 billion). While Nuance is best known for its work in the healthcare industry, the company is also active in a number of other verticals targeted by Microsoft, including financial services, retail and telecommunications. Microsoft plans to use Nuance’s technology to develop vertically optimized AI solutions.
“Customers will benefit from an improved experience for consumers, patients, clinicians and employees and ultimately increased productivity and financial performance,” Microsoft said. Note that Mark Benjamin will remain the CEO of Nuance and will report directly to Scott Guthrie, executive vice president of Microsoft Cloud + AI Group. Microsoft also announced that Nuance’s offerings will complement contact center solutions with Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 Customer Service product to create a secure, artificial intelligence-enhanced contact center offering.
Source: ZDNet.com