Nuance Communications will now become a division of Microsoft Corporation
Microsoft Corporation announced the acquisition of Nuance Communications, which is engaged in the development of speech recognition technology. This deal has become the most expensive for the Internet giant since the purchase of LinkedIn. Microsoft paid $56 per share for the company, and this amount is 23% more than the value of the paper at the last auction. In total, the acquisition cost $19.7 billion, taking into account the developer’s debt as well.
Nuance was involved in the creation of Apple’s electronic assistant, and its products were used to train Siri. The company works with the concept of artificial intelligence, training it to identify human speech and intonation. Before acquiring Nuance, Microsoft collaborated with it for about two years. The companies’ specialists worked together on software, which allows for the automatic recording of conversations between a doctor and a patient. This information is recognized, systematized and entered into electronic medical records.
The acquisition of Nuance will allow Bill Gates Corporation to expand and improve solutions for the healthcare sphere, which the corporation implemented last year. Such cloud-based products have been gaining popularity for some time, but they really came into play during the pandemic, when physicians were not coping with the traditional methods of managing and counseling patients.
According to Microsoft representatives, the current CEO will continue to manage the processes in Nuance. Experts note that the acquisition of the developer is an excellent step on the part of the Internet giant. The fact is that there is a growing demand for recognition technologies, and Nuance has been extremely successful in this direction. The latter’s developments will greatly accelerate the process of converting many processes in healthcare into digital format, thereby relieving specialists of a number of duties. This market sector is not yet as developed in terms of automation as, for example, the retail trade or the financial sector. Therefore, in the coming years, healthcare will be actively moving towards progress, and Microsoft wants to occupy this promising niche.
Nuance’s developments in the segment of speech recognition and optical data are used not only by private, but also by state companies. It cooperates with the U.S. military agencies in the segment of creating software for various missions.
Nuance’s own application is called Dragon Go, which functions as a digital assistant. When interacting with the assistant, the software analyzes human speech and processes it. All of this information is stored on the company’s servers, for which the developer has been criticized more than once. Some users believe that such information can create the preconditions for spying on people.