Microsoft Acquires Nuance--Makers of Dragon Speech Recognition--for $16 Billion
Freeman writes:
Microsoft acquires Nuance-makers of Dragon speech rec-for $16 billion:
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 is a well-known player in the field of natural language recognition. The company's technology is the core of Apple's Siri personal assistant. Nuance also sells well-known personal speech-recognition software Dragon NaturallySpeaking, which is invaluable to many people with a wide range of physical disabilities.
[...] Acquiring Nuance gives Microsoft direct access to the company's entire health care customer list. It also gives Microsoft the opportunity to push Nuance technology-currently, mostly used in the US-to Microsoft's own large international market. Nuance chief executive Mark Benjamin-who will continue to run Nuance as a Microsoft division after the acquisition-describes it as an opportunity to "superscale how we change an industry."
[...] The acquisition has been unanimously approved by the Boards of Directors of both Nuance and Microsoft, and it is expected to close by the end of 2021.
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