Microsoft to acquire Nuance for $19.7 billion
Microsoft announced a definitive agreement to acquire Nuance Communications, a speech recognition and conversational AI company, for $56.00 a share in cash — $19.7 billion including net debt, making it Microsoft's second-largest acquisition after LinkedIn. Nuance provided clinical voice-to-text for hospitals and physician practices along with ambient clinical intelligence that records and summarizes the conversation in an exam room, and Microsoft framed the deal as strengthening its industry-specific cloud offerings. Paying a high price for AI embedded in the workflow of a particular profession, rather than for general-purpose capability, prefigured the strategy of shipping Copilot by line of business. The acquisition closed on March 4, 2022 after regulatory review.