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Microsoft Acquires Nuance--Makers of Dragon Speech Recognition--for $16 Billion

posted by martyb on Tuesday April 13 2021, @05:02AM   Printer-friendly
from the nature'll-anguish-wreck-ignition dept.

Freeman writes:

Microsoft acquires Nuance—makers of Dragon speech rec—for $16 billion:

Earlier today, Microsoft announced its plans to purchase Nuance for $56 per share—23 percent above Nuance's closing price last Friday. The deal adds up to a $16 billion cash outlay and a total valuation for Nuance of about $19.7 billion, including that company's assumed debt.

Nuance is a well-known player in the field of natural language recognition. The company's technology is the core of Apple's Siri personal assistant. Nuance also sells well-known personal speech-recognition software Dragon NaturallySpeaking, which is invaluable to many people with a wide range of physical disabilities.

[...] Acquiring Nuance gives Microsoft direct access to the company's entire health care customer list. It also gives Microsoft the opportunity to push Nuance technology—currently, mostly used in the US—to Microsoft's own large international market. Nuance chief executive Mark Benjamin—who will continue to run Nuance as a Microsoft division after the acquisition—describes it as an opportunity to "superscale how we change an industry."

[...] The acquisition has been unanimously approved by the Boards of Directors of both Nuance and Microsoft, and it is expected to close by the end of 2021.

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 13 2021, @05:16AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 13 2021, @05:16AM (#1136867)

    MS seems to act more and more like IBM. Shedding their Windows business like IBM did with PC/Thinikpad business.

    One thing for sure - MS is, and has been for years, no longer a high-growth high-tech outfit. Just like IBM, it's a low-growth, "high-tech" (?) dinosaur holding company.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 13 2021, @05:20AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 13 2021, @05:20AM (#1136870)

    Guess MS will hold onto Windows business for a while, just like IBM kept on their mainframe business - gotta suck on the cashcow's tits.

  • (Score: 2) by choose another one on Tuesday April 13 2021, @12:59PM

    by choose another one (515) on Tuesday April 13 2021, @12:59PM (#1136969)

    Except, OTOH, MS has Azure, and cloud-based CRM, SharePoint, Office etc. etc. etc.

    I can't even name IBMs cloud offerings, do they even have any?

    MS is no longer a high-growth high-tech desktop platform (or mobile) business. And they don't care, and nor do their shareholders - compare MSFT vs. IBM over last 5yrs, I know where I'd have put my money.