Foreign media reported that Microsoft will buy nuance, an artificial intelligence voice technology company, for 19.7 billion dollars, to enhance the strength of Microsoft technology giants in speech recognition and transcribing. Microsoft will pay nuance $56 A share, a 23 per cent premium to the company's closing price on Friday.

Nuance is most famous for its dragon software, which uses deep learning to transcribe voice and improves its accuracy over time by adapting to the voice of users. Nuance has licensed the technology to many services and applications, including Siri, the most famous apple digital assistant (although it is unclear to what extent Siri currently relies on dragon to answer user inquiries). Dragon is the industry leader in transcription accuracy.

It is understood that the acquisition of nuance for 19.7 billion dollars is Microsoft's second largest acquisition, after the $26billion acquisition of LinkedIn in 2016. This is in the era of rapid improvement of voice technology, thanks to the boom of in-depth learning of artificial intelligence, and also has more opportunities for use.

Digital transcription has become more reliable in a range of occasions, from medical advice to board meetings and university lectures. The increase in remote work has also created new opportunities. Since many meetings are conducted through video, it is easier to provide transcribing services to customers through software directly integrated into these phones. For example, zoom provides automated transcription services through integration with third-party services such as otter.

For Microsoft, about two thirds of its revenue comes from enterprise software sales and cloud computing, and improving its transcription services for such scenarios is entirely meaningful. Microsoft can integrate nuance's technology into its existing software, such as Microsoft teams, or provide it as part of azure cloud business independently.

However, the immediate focus will be on the health sector, which the two companies have worked together in the past. In 2019, they announced the establishment of a "strategic partnership" to digitize health records for Microsoft customers using nuance software. Nuance's health technology, including its dragon medical one platform, has been adapted to identify medical terms, with more than 500000 doctors in use worldwide and 77 per cent of hospitals in the United States, according to reports.

Nuance provides the AI layer of medical service points, and is the pioneer of the practical application of artificial intelligence in enterprises. " Microsoft CEO sathianadra said in a statement. "AI is the most important priority of technology, and medical treatment is its most urgent application. With our partner ecosystem, we will put advanced AI solutions into the hands of professionals around the world to drive better decision-making and create meaningful connections, and we will accelerate the growth of Microsoft cloud in healthcare and nuance. "

The news of the acquisition of nuance, first reported by Bloomberg, is the latest example of Microsoft's massive purchases. Last month, Microsoft completed its acquisition of zenimax, the b-club game parent, for $7.5 billion. Last year, Microsoft considered buying tiktock, a social video app, and it is reported that it is also "exclusive negotiation" to buy discord, an electronic game chat platform.

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