Microsoft gets approval for its purchase of Nuance from European Commission

Microsoft on Tuesday got unconditional approval from the Election commission for its purchase of Nuance, an artificial intelligence company. Microsoft had bought the AI speech tech firm Nuance for $19.7 billion in April. Nuance was the Nadella-led company's second-biggest acquisition after LinkedIn. With the new acquisition, Microsoft aims to boost its presence in the health care market.

The European Commission said that the 19.7 billion deal between Microsoft and Nuance would not give rise to any competition concerns about competition in the European Economic Area (EEA). "The commission found that Microsoft and Nuance offer very different products. While Nuance offers mostly pre-built solutions for end-users, Microsoft offers application programming interfaces (API) as part of its Azure Cognitive Services." This is of no direct benefit to end-users, but allows programmers to build speech recognition into their respective programs," the EU release said.

Nuance is primarily known for its Dragon software that helps in transcribing speech using deep learning. It has also been credited for its accuracy over time by adapting the user's voice. The company has licensed this technology for many services and applications, including Apple's Siri. Microsoft may use the Nuance's technology with its existing software like Teams or may offer with Azure cloud business.

"By augmenting the Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare with Nuance's solutions, as well as the benefit of Nuance's expertise and relationships with EHR systems providers, Microsoft will be better able to empower healthcare providers through the power of ambient clinical intelligence and other Microsoft cloud services," said Microsoft in a blog post," Microsoft had said in the blog post.

Apart from healthcare services, Nuance AI expertise and customer engagement solutions across Interactive Voice Response (IVR), virtual assistants, and digital and biometric solutions to companies around the world across all industries. Microsoft will include special features of Nuance in its existing applications such as Azure, Teams, and Dynamics 365.

In the blog post, the 19.7 billion deal between Microsoft and Nuance was unanimously approved by the Boards of Directors of both Nuance and Microsoft.

Talking about Microsoft's acquisition, CEO Satya Nadella, "Nuance provides the AI layer at the healthcare point of delivery and is a pioneer in the real-world application of enterprise AI. AI is technology's most important priority, and healthcare is its most urgent application. Together, with our partner ecosystem, we will put advanced AI solutions into the hands of professionals everywhere to drive better decision-making and create more meaningful connections, as we accelerate the growth of Microsoft Cloud in Healthcare and Nuance."