Microsoft allowed to acquire Nuance from European Commission

The European Commission approved the acquisition of Nuance by Microsoft on Tuesday. The deal is worth $16 billion. The two companies have already collaborated on speech recognition and artificial intelligence in healthcare.

The European Commission was the last authority to approve the deal. Australia and the United States had previously approved the acquisition, Reuters reported. According to the European Commission, “the deal does not create competition problems within the European market.”

Microsoft announced the acquisition in April and the two companies were already working together at the time. Nuance is engaged in developing health applications used by physicians. In addition, Nuance is also developing speech recognition technology, which is used by Siri, Apple’s voice assistant, among others.

With the acquisition, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella hopes to become a bigger player in the healthcare field. According to Nadella, Nuance’s technology will enable Microsoft to “help medical professionals make better decisions.” It is estimated that 77 percent of hospitals in the United States use Nuance technology.

The acquisition of Nuance is the second largest acquisition the tech giant has made at $16 billion. Only the acquisition of LinkedIn in 2016 was a bigger deal. Microsoft deposited $26.2 billion for the business platform.