Photographer: Simon Dawson / Bloomberg
Photographer: Simon Dawson / Bloomberg
Microsoft Corp. is in advanced talks to buy artificial intelligence and speech technology company Nuance Communications Inc., according to people familiar with the matter.
An agreement could be announced as early as this week, say the people who asked not to be identified because the information is private. The price being discussed could value Nuance around $ 56 a share, though the terms may still change, one of the people said.
This will be the value of Nuance, which laid the foundation for the technology used in Apple Inc. ‘s Siri voice software, valued at about $ 16 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The price is a premium of 23% until Friday’s closing for Nuance.
The talks are continuing and the discussions may still fall apart, the people said.
A Microsoft representative declined to comment. A Nuance spokeswoman based in Burlington, Massachusetts, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Nuance’s shares climbed 3.4% this year, giving the company a market value of nearly $ 13 billion, but still the 9.9% jump in the S&P 500 index. Microsoft climbed by 15%.
Microsoft, with a market value of more than $ 1.93 billion, remains active at the forefront. Last month, Bloomberg News reported that the software giant was in talks to acquire Discord Inc., a video game community, for more than $ 10 billion. It also has videogame maker purchased Zenimax Media Inc. for $ 7.5 billion in cash in a deal signed this year.
An agreement for Nuance is Microsoft’s second largest acquisition, behind only $ 24 billion LinkedIn Corp. transaction in 2016, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Microsoft and Nuance since 2019 collaborated on technologies to do things like enable physicians to record voice conversations of patient visits and enter the data into electronic medical records.