According to recent reports, Microsoft is in advanced acquisition talks with the AI voice company Nuance Communications. For those who don’t know, Nuance Communications is a developer of the Dragon Naturally Speaking family of voice technology products. Moreover, its speech recognition engine is the basis for Apple’s voice assistant Siri as well as dozens of other real-world applications with enterprise clients.
Bloomberg News, citing anonymous sources, revealed that if the deal goes through, it will value Nuance at roughly $56 a share which is a premium of 23% since the stock closed on Friday at $43.58. The total value of the company will rise to $16 billion. As of now, the Massachusetts-based Nuance has a market capital value of $13 billion.
The sources believe that the news could be announced this week. However, both companies have declined to comment on the matter.
If the news is true, this deal will be Microsoft’s second-largest purchase ever after the company acquired LinkedIn in 2016 for $24 billion. Over the years, the company has acquired companies like Skype and GitHub. It has also purchased game studio ZeniMax Media, for $7.5 billion in a deal that closed this year. The company also tried getting its hands on TikTok but failed to win the bid.
In other news, reportedly, the company is also in talks to acquire online-chat app Discord for over $10 billion.
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