Microsoft Closes on $16-Billion Acquisition of Nuance

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

The deal, which was introduced final yr, helps Microsoft get extra entrenched into hospitals and the well being care business by Nuance’s broadly used medical dictation and transcription instruments. The acquisition is Microsoft’s second-largest after its $26 billion (roughly Rs. 1,98,706 crore) buy of profession networking service LinkedIn in 2016.

Nuance’s synthetic intelligence expertise helped energy Apple’s Siri digital voice assistant upon its launch on iPhones greater than a decade in the past. The Burlington, Massachusetts-based firm has since shifted to deal with physicians and different tailor-made makes use of of its Dragon line of voice recognition instruments.

Microsoft introduced it was shopping for the corporate in April 2021 however confronted a setback in December when British antitrust regulators mentioned they have been opening an investigation into whether or not it may lead to a “substantial lessening of competitors” within the UK market. The British company introduced it cleared that deal Wednesday.

The merger was individually cleared later in December by regulators within the European Union, which Britain left in 2020. The EU’s high antitrust authority mentioned Microsoft and Nuance “supply very totally different merchandise” and would proceed to face robust competitors of their respective markets.

Microsoft continued to buy this yr, in January saying that it could spend practically $70 billion (roughly Rs. 5,11,000 crore) to acquire online game maker Activision Blizzard.

Mark Benjamin will proceed to function CEO of Nuance and report back to Scott Guthrie, the pinnacle of Microsoft’s cloud computing and AI division.

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