Microsoft has acquired speech recognition company, Nuance, which helped develop Apple’s Siri, in a $19.7 billion cash transactions, OYOgist.com reports.
In a post announcing the deal, the company said the purchase was about increasing its presence in the healthcare vertical, a place where Nuance has done well in recent years. In fact, the company announced the Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare last year, and this deal is about accelerating its presence there. Nuance’s products in this area include Dragon Ambient eXperience, Dragon Medical One and PowerScribe One for radiology reporting.
“Today’s acquisition announcement represents the latest step in Microsoft’s industry-specific cloud strategy,” the company wrote. The acquisition also builds on several integrations and partnerships the two companies have made in the last couple of years.
Acquiring Nuance will be Microsoft’s second biggest purchase since it bought LinkedIn in 2016 at over $26 billion.
Microsoft plans to use Nuance’s technology to augment Microsoft’s cloud products for health care, which were launched last year. Nuance would be aligned with the part of Microsoft’s business that serves businesses and governments.
