"MS Negotiates Acquisition of AI Company Nuance... Second Largest M&A Ever (Summary)"

(Source: Samyukta Lakshmi/Bloomberg/Getty Images)

[Asia Economy Reporter Yujin Cho] Microsoft (MS) is reportedly in negotiations to acquire Nuance Communications, an artificial intelligence (AI) and speech recognition technology company, according to Bloomberg News and others on the 11th (local time).

The news agency stated that the acquisition price could be around $16 billion (approximately 18 trillion KRW), but since the negotiations have not yet been finalized, the terms may change. The acquisition price reflects a premium of 23% over the closing price on the 9th, at about $56 per share.

Anonymous sources reported that the negotiations are likely to be finalized within this week and could be announced as early as the 12th. If the deal is completed, it would be MS's second-largest acquisition after LinkedIn in 2016 ($26.2 billion).

Nuance, headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts, USA, is a company with application software technology foundations across various fields ranging from healthcare to the automotive industry, and is known to have participated in the launch of Apple's AI personal assistant program, Siri. MS and Nuance have been collaborating in the speech recognition field since 2019.

US economic media CNBC reported that Nuance's AI and speech recognition technologies are expected to be utilized to expand MS's office software functions for enterprise and government clients.

Nuance recorded a net profit of $346 million in the fourth quarter of last year, and had 7,100 employees as of the end of September last year.

Nuance is listed on the US Nasdaq, and its stock price on the 9th was $45.58, marking a 166% increase over the past year compared to $17.13 on April 13th.

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