Tech Giant, Microsoft Acquires Nuance for $19.7B

Microsoft has acquired a big healthcare Tech firm, Nuance about the same time Twitter announces building a presence in Africa.

Microsoft announced on the morning of April 12th that it’s acquiring speech-to-text company Nuance Communications for $19.7 billion. It seems like the real focus here is on healthcare — Microsoft announced a Cloud for Healthcare last year, while Nuance’s industrial products include Dragon Ambient eXperience, Dragon Medical One, and PowerScribe One for radiology reporting.

“Today’s acquisition announcement represents the latest step in Microsoft’s industry-specific cloud strategy,” the company said in a blog post.

Analysts claim that this could help Microsoft fill in crucial gaps when it comes to both speech recognition and health data.