Nuance, a recognized voice recognition company in its field, will indeed join the Microsoft team for some $ 19.7 billion. At the end of a European Commission anti-concentration investigation, this one decided, on December 21, ” to authorize unconditionally »The acquisition.
Nuance, a company worthy of interest
Nuance, although little known, is one of the oldest companies working around Artificial Intelligence since it was born in 1992. Among the notable facts to its credit, its collaboration in the development of Siri. Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, announced in April 2021 his intention to afford Nuance.
Google, Huawei and Microsoft, pillars of global R&D
The European Commission decided to launch an investigation when it was officially notified of the transaction on November 26, 2021. The European institution describes Nuance as a company providing transcription software, customer engagement solutions and healthcare products. A more recent orientation, which manifests itself in the creation of recognition systems to relieve doctors of certain administrative tasks.
The Commission investigators looked into several points:
- Does the transcription and healthcare software market depend on Microsoft Azure for the cloud. Richmond could be tempted to block access to its cloud from Nuance’s competitors if it did.
- Microsoft does he plan to oust competitors in terms of service offerings. Nuance, before redemption, was only available on Windows, so the operation should not change anything.
- Will the data from Nuance give Microsoft a competitive advantage? According to the Commission, Nuance’s contractual and legal restrictions prevent this. In addition, this data would not in itself give the American giant the ability to oust its opponents.
The second largest acquisition in Microsoft’s history
Conclusion of the investigation carried out by the Commission “the transaction would not pose any competition problem within the European Economic Area”. The European institution also specifies that this acquisition authorization is the decision most often adopted, even if the refusals are more publicized.
In this specific case, the scale of the acquisition is cause for concern. After LinkedIn in 2016, bought in 2016 for $ 26.2 billion, the acquisition of Nuance is the largest operation led by Microsoft. Nuance represents $ 1.5 billion in revenue in 2020 and projects growth of 6% to 11% by 2030. A nice Christmas present to put under the tree of the company headed by Satya Nadella.