The Microsoft company has just made what would have become the second largest acquisition in its history after it bought LinkedIn in 2016 for $ 26.2 billion.
And it is that it has acquired Nuance Communication for the not inconsiderable figure of 19.7 billion dollars , something that has attracted the attention of many specialists, especially if we take into account that Nuance is a company specialized in artificial intelligence and voice technologies. , which would allow the Redmond firm to strengthen its presence in the health sector, among others.
Launched in 1992, Nuance has managed to become a historical artificial intelligence company, which has been recognized worldwide for the development of different products based on voice recognition, contributing greatly, for example, to the development of Siri , Apple’s voice assistant, although the firm of the bitten apple has never commented on it.
Although it is a fairly prominent acquisition, the reality is that both companies are not strangers to each other, especially if we take into account that Nuance Communications has been working with Microsoft for two years, in order to combine the developed speech recognition technologies by Nuance with the Microsoft video conferencing application , Teams, to transform it into a telemedicine tool .
Microsoft seeks to strengthen its presence in the health sector
At a time marked by the current coronavirus pandemic, there is no doubt that Microsoft seeks to develop its offering in the cloud for the healthcare industry, where in fact Nuance Communications is already particularly active, since it has become one of the main cloud-based clinical intelligence and conversational artificial intelligence providers for healthcare providers.
According to the press release issued by Microsoft itself, by augmenting the company’s cloud for healthcare with different Nuance solutions, the firm would be in a better position to “empower healthcare providers.”
Indeed, there is no doubt that this acquisition could help digitize the healthcare industry , which has certainly been held back at a time when the health crisis caused by the pandemic has led to an increase in telemedicine .
Would a new version of Cortana be expected?
We must also remember that Nuance technology is behind Apple’s Siri virtual assistant , so it is normal that we wonder if this acquisition by Microsoft could add improvements and a new version to Cortana , its virtual assistant, so that the company could re-enter this sector.
And is that with the different technologies both speech recognition and artificial intelligence developed by Nuance, there is no doubt that Microsoft could offer a completely revised, updated and corrected version of Cortana , even offering a new virtual assistant enriched with artificial intelligence.
In any case, with more than 7,100 employees around the world, Nuance reported revenues of $ 1.5 billion in 2020, while, by 2023, the company is betting on growth that would range between 6 and 11 percent.
This operation comes after Microsoft bought, in September 2020, the ZeniMax group, the parent company of the Bethesda studio (creator of the Fallout game) for 7.5 billion dollars. And a few months later he did the same with the platform specialized in eSports sporting events, smash.gg, for an amount that was not disclosed.
