Microsoft completes acquisition of Nuance to enable a new era of outcomes-based AI

Microsoft has completed its acquisition of Nuance Communications Inc., a provider of conversational AI and ambient intelligence across industries including healthcare, financial services, retail, and telecommunications.

The deal was first announced in spring 2021.

According to Microsoft, driven by a shared vision to build outcomes-based AI, the two companies will enable organizations across industries to accelerate their business goals with security-focused, cloud-based solutions infused with powerful, vertically optimized AI.

The companies said customers will benefit particularly from enhanced consumer, patient, clinician and employee experiences, and ultimately improved productivity and financial performance.

Nuance is a provider of conversational AI and cloud-based ambient clinical intelligence for healthcare providers. Its products include the Dragon Ambient eXperience, Dragon Medical One and PowerScribe One for radiology reporting, all clinical speech recognition SaaS offerings built on Microsoft Azure. Nuance’s solutions work with core healthcare systems, including longstanding relationships with Electronic Health Records (EHRs), to alleviate the burden of clinical documentation and empower providers to deliver better patient experiences.

Beyond healthcare, Nuance provides 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. This expertise, the companies said when the deal was first announced, will come together with Microsoft’s cloud offerings, including Azure, Teams, and Dynamics 365, to deliver next-generation customer engagement and security solutions.

“Completion of this significant and strategic acquisition brings together Nuance’s best-in-class conversational AI and ambient intelligence with Microsoft’s secure and trusted industry cloud offerings,” said Scott Guthrie, executive vice president, Cloud + AI Group, Microsoft. “This powerful combination will help providers offer more affordable, effective, and accessible healthcare, and help organizations in every industry create more personalized and meaningful customer experiences. I couldn’t be more pleased to welcome the Nuance team to our Microsoft family.”

As digital transformation accelerates, Microsoft said, organizations in every sector across the globe can address challenges that will have a fundamental impact on their success—from reducing clinician burnout and enhancing early detection and treatment of disease in healthcare to creating personalized customer experiences and supporting employees’ productivity and well-being in financial services, retail and telecommunications.

Microsoft and Nuance cloud-based AI solutions are expected to help meet business goals and address organizations’ most pressing needs. In addition, the companies said, Microsoft and Nuance can strengthen organizations’ ability across industries to scale their impact by offering the services consumers, patients and employees rely on, when or where they need them.

“Combining the power of Nuance’s deep vertical expertise and proven business outcomes across healthcare, financial services, retail, telecommunications, and other industries with Microsoft’s global cloud ecosystems will enable us to accelerate our innovation and deploy our solutions more quickly, more seamlessly and at greater scale to solve our customers’ most pressing challenges,” said Mark Benjamin, CEO of Nuance. “As Microsoft and Nuance come together as one organization, we are excited about the opportunities ahead for our technology, employees, customers and partners.”

Benjamin will remain CEO of Nuance and report to Guthrie.

For more information about Nuance, go to www.nuance.com.