Microsoft buys AI company technologyof speech Nuance for $19,7 billion, strengthening Redmond's dominance in voice recognition and giving it a further push into the healthcare market, where Nuance has many products.
Microsoft will pay $ 56 per share for Nuance, a 23% premium on the closing price of the company last Friday. The deal also includes Nuance's net debt.
Nuance is best known for its Dragon software, which uses deep learning to transcribe speeches and improves its accuracy over time by adapting the user's voice.
Nuance has licensed this technology to many services and applications, as in Apple's Siri digital assistant.
Its purchase of Nuance for $19,7 billion is Microsoft's second largest after its purchase LinkedIn in 2016 against $26 billion. It comes at a time when speech technology is improving very quickly, thanks to the explosion of deep learning in AI.
Digital transcription has become much more reliable and is used, from medical consultations to board meetings and university lectures. The rise of remote work has also created new opportunities. With so many meetings taking place via video, it's easier to offer clients transcripts via software built directly into these calls. Zoom, for example, offers automatic transcription through integration with third-party services such as Otter.
