Microsoft Closes on $16-Billion Acquisition of Nuance

Microsoft announced it was buying the company in April 2021 but faced a setback in December.

By Associated Press | Updated: 5 March 2022 13:53 IST

Microsoft Closes on $16-Billion Acquisition of Nuance

Photo Credit: Bloomberg

Mark Benjamin will continue to serve as CEO of Nuance

Highlights

Microsoft and Nuance "offer very different products"
Nuance’s AI technology helped power Apple’s Siri
Microsoft announced it was buying the company in April 2021

Microsoft has closed on its approximately $16 billion (roughly Rs. 1,22,280 crore) acquisition of speech recognition company Nuance.

The deal, which was announced last year, helps Microsoft get more entrenched into hospitals and the health care industry through Nuance's widely used medical dictation and transcription tools. The acquisition is Microsoft's second-largest after its $26 billion (roughly Rs. 1,98,706 crore) purchase of career networking service LinkedIn in 2016.

Nuance's artificial intelligence technology helped power Apple's Siri digital voice assistant upon its release on iPhones more than a decade ago. The Burlington, Massachusetts-based company has since shifted to focus on physicians and other tailored uses of its Dragon line of voice recognition tools.

Facebook Gaming Is Overrun With Strange Videos and Scams

Microsoft announced it was buying the company in April 2021 but faced a setback in December when British antitrust regulators said they were opening an investigation into whether it could result in a “substantial lessening of competition” in the UK market. The British agency announced it cleared that deal Wednesday.

The merger was separately cleared later in December by regulators in the European Union, which Britain left in 2020. The EU's top antitrust authority said Microsoft and Nuance “offer very different products” and would continue to face strong competition in their respective markets.

Microsoft continued to shop this year, in January announcing that it would spend nearly $70 billion (roughly Rs. 5,11,000 crore) to acquire video game maker Activision Blizzard.

Microsoft 'Suspends' New Sales of Products, Services in Russia

Mark Benjamin will continue to serve as CEO of Nuance and report to Scott Guthrie, the head of Microsoft's cloud computing and AI division.

Shares of Microsoft, based in Redmond, Washington, declined slightly amid a broader market sell-off Friday.

What should you know about MWC 2022? We discuss this on Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast. Orbital is available on Spotify, Gaana, JioSaavn, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and wherever you get your podcasts.

Affiliate links may be automatically generated - see our ethics statement for details.

Comments

For the latest tech news and reviews, follow Gadgets 360 on X, Facebook, WhatsApp, Threads and Google News. For the latest videos on gadgets and tech, subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you want to know everything about top influencers, follow our in-house Who'sThat360 on Instagram and YouTube.