Microsoft buying speech recognition firm Nuance on $16 bil deal
Microsoft, on an accelerated growth push, is definitely buying speech recognition provider Nuance in a deal worth about $16 billion.
The acquisition will get Microsoft deeper into hospitals and medical care industry through Nuance's widely used medical dictation and transcription tools.
Microsoft can pay $56 per share cash. The companies value the deal including debt at $19.7 billion.
Shares of Burlington, Massachusetts-based Nuance surged about 16% in Mon trading.
Nuance is a pioneer found in voice-based artificial cleverness technology and was instrumental in helping to vitality Apple's digital assistant Siri. It possesses since shifted its emphasis to healthcare, including a product that listens in on test room conversations between physicians and patients and instantly writes up the doctor's recommendations.
“This clinical documentation essentially writes itself, supplying physicians time back again to concentrate on patient care,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said on a conference call about the deal Monday.
Microsoft and Nuance had previously shaped a business partnership on 2019. That relationship grew during the pandemic, allowing Nuance to get its patient-medical doctor transcription offerings into telehealth appointments on Microsoft Clubs. The Redmond, Washington, software giant said that this month's deal will dual its potential industry in medical care provider industry to nearly $500 billion.
“Put Microsoft and Nuance collectively and it allows Microsoft to follow the exploding health care market, which is burning right now as it’s modernizing, adopting digital engagement and moving to the cloud,” stated Forrester analyst Kate Leggett.
Nuance’s goods include clinical speech acknowledgement program offerings such as for example Dragon Ambient eXperience, Dragon Medical An individual and PowerScribe, which are built about Microsoft's Azure cloud program. The companies said Nuance goods are used by more than 55% of physicians and 75% of radiologists in the U.S., and by 77% of U.S. hospitals. Revenue from its healthcare cloud business grew 37% year-over-year in fiscal 2020.
“AI is technology’s most significant priority, and health care is its most urgent request,” Nadella said.
Microsoft as well has its own digital tone of voice assistant, Cortana, but its use has been limited compared to similar consumer-oriented features from Amazon, Google and Apple. Nuance provides sought to refine its tone of voice recognition technology beyond client use to raised understand the complexities of medical terminology.
Aside from healthcare, Nuance provides voice-related AI technology found in other products, including secureness features that may recognize and authenticate specific voices so they can unlock an online bill. Nuance also markets automated call-middle and customer-service chatbot services to retailers, telecommunications organizations and other sectors.
Scott Guthrie, who prospects Microsoft's cloud and AI division, said Mon that Nuance's medical sector expertise could sooner or later expand to different uses, such as for example interpreting conversations between fiscal advisers and their consumers.
The transaction is Microsoft’s second major deal following its $26 billion purchase of LinkedIn in 2016. Previous September, it bought gaming maker ZeniMax for $7.5 billion.
Leggett said the Nuance deal fits a force by cloud computing companies like Microsoft to provide “industry-specific AI,” or technology that's tailored to the special needs of medical industry and other sectors.
Mark Benjamin will continue seeing as Nuance CEO.
The transaction is likely to close this season. It still needs acceptance from Nuance shareholders. Nuance possessed 7,100 employees by September, over fifty percent of whom were outside the U.S. - incorporating crews that help transcribe and edit documented speech that the AI technology may not fully understand.
Source: japantoday.com
