Rumor: Microsoft wants to acquire voice company Nuance for $16 billion

Microsoft would be interested in acquiring speech technology company Nuance, says financial news agency Bloomberg. The software company is said to be willing to pay $16 billion, making it Microsoft’s second-largest acquisition to date.

The deal could be announced as early as this week, Bloomberg said. However, it is not yet certain whether the acquisition will go through. The talks could also be broken off, the financial news agency said. The deal would value Nuance at $16 billion. This would make it Microsoft’s second-largest acquisition to date. The largest is LinkedIn, for which Microsoft paid $26 billion in 2016.

Nuance Communications makes voice control software and currently employs approximately 6,500 people and is a publicly traded company with a market value of approximately $12 billion. Nuance is known for the speech recognition behind Apple’s digital assistant Siri, but mainly focuses on business applications of speech and AI. The company has been around for almost thirty years. Both companies have not yet responded.