Microsoft announced the purchase of the company, Nuance, for artificial intelligence and speech technology, for $ 16 billion;
This enhances the capabilities of the software giant in voice recognition, and gives it additional influence in the healthcare market.
The deal comes after the two companies entered into a partnership in 2019 to automate hospital administrative work, such as documentation, and it highlights the American company's ambition to expand its leadership in the health field, which is accelerating towards digital transformation during the epidemic.
Healthcare providers have invested more in technology to improve productivity and digital health services.
"This acquisition brings our technology directly to the doctor and the patient, and is fundamental in all healthcare delivery," Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in a phone call to investors. "The acquisition will also expand our leadership in artificial intelligence and biometric security." In this industry. "
Nuance is best known for its Dragon program, which uses deep learning to copy speech and improve its accuracy over time by adapting to the user's voice.
The program also helped the "Apple" company (Apple) launch the virtual assistant "Siri".
In addition to introducing voice recognition technologies, the company is now focusing on healthcare and artificial intelligence for enterprises after separating and selling a number of less profitable business units.
The company said it serves 77% of US hospitals and provides smart solutions, including speech recognition during clinical examination, medical transcription and imaging.
The rise in remote work has also created new opportunities, and with the many videoconferencing, it has become easier to provide written copies to clients via software built directly into these calls.
The company, which is headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts, through its operations in 28 countries, recorded revenues of $ 1.5 billion in fiscal year 2020, two-thirds of which came from healthcare.
The company said Mark Benjamin will remain chief executive of Nuance, reporting to Scott Guthrie, Microsoft's executive vice president of cloud computing and artificial intelligence.
This deal comes on the heels of Microsoft's recent acquisition of the gaming company, "ZeniMax Media", worth $ 7.5 billion, and it has also been reported that Microsoft is in talks to buy the "Discord" messaging platform, which also allows the organization of live audio events.
Once completed, the Nuance deal will be Microsoft's second-largest deal, after its acquisition of LinkedIn worth $ 26.2 billion in 2016.