In the latest statement released by Microsoft, the company has revealed that it has bought Nuance, Artificial Intelligence(AI) based speech recognition firm. Microsoft will pay $16 billion to Nuance for taking full control of the company.
As per the financial detail, the software giant will pay $56 per Nuance share that is approximately a 23% premium over Nuance’s closing price Friday.
Details about the Current Acquisitions by Microsoft
In one of the biggest acquisitions in recent years, Microsoft has acquired the speech recognition firm Nuance. The company will use the latest technology of Nuance in its health care products.
On Monday, Microsoft said that it will pay 23% extra per share to Nuance’s share value closed on Friday. The deal amount is around $16 billion but it will reach a $19 billion value including debt.
With the latest acquisitions, Microsoft is expanding its operations to grow further. As per reports, the company is also in advanced talks to by Discord, a chat app with a whopping amount of $10 billion. The software firm also tried to buy Tiktok US business last year for about $30 billion. The deal could not go through due to various reasons.
This is the second-largest acquisition by Microsoft in half a decade. In 2016, the firm acquired LinkedIn with a whopping amount of $26 billion. In March, Microsoft also bought Zenimax, an online gaming company for a $7.6 billion deal.
Current acquisition news of Nuance has surged the speech recognition firm share by 18% on Monday. Microsoft also saw a slight positive change in its share value. Microsoft hit the $1.5 trillion market cap last year.
How Will Nuance Help Microsoft?
Nuance operation will be combined with the latest offerings of Microsoft. Nuance is known to sell tools related to recognizing and transcribing speech in doctor office visits, customer service calls, and voicemails. Microsoft said that Nuance technology will be utilized for cloud products launched by the firm in 2020. It will mainly use the Nuance speech recognition system in its health care cloud products.
Microsoft CEO announced that the current acquisition is due to Nuance’s health care tools. Talking about the Nuance health care tools, in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” Monday, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said:
“We’ve seen a massive acceleration of digital transformation… health care in particular. When you think about the provider market… digital tech is going to be the key.”
Nuance recorded a reported $7 million net income with approximately $346 million in revenue in the fourth quarter of 2020. The firm observed a 4% decline in its revenue when compared with last year’s fourth quarter of 2019. Founded in 1992, Nuance had 7100 employees in September 2020.
As per the agreement, Nuance CEO Mark Benjamin will continue handling the Nuance operations in Microsoft. He will now report to Scott Guthrie, in charge of Microsoft’s cloud and artificial intelligence businesses.
Nuance is a well-known firm in the field of voice recognition technology. Companies like Apple, Microsoft have tried to acquire it for a long time. Finally, Microsoft achieved its long-time mission. Microsoft has already added a voice-recognition system to its different products. Nuance will further enhance its voice-based products in the future.
