4 ms·
Several years ago I used a Nuance product named Dragon NaturallySpeaking that had speech-to-text capability and adds verbal accessibility features on Windows pl
by someperson 6y ago
Several years ago I used a Nuance product named Dragon NaturallySpeaking that had speech-to-text capability and adds verbal accessibility features on Windows platforms (eg, say "Open Word", speak your document aloud, then "Close Word")
I had no idea they had enough sales to justify a $20 billion valuation. Though to be fair, Microsoft tends to acquire companies at high price tags (eg, Skype, LinkedIn, Minecraft) compared to eg, Apple's acquisition strategy of smaller technology focused companies (other than Beats headphones) like P.A. Semi and PrimeSense.
EDIT: Other comments say Nuance's patent portfolio may greatly contribute to its valuation.
- ocdtrekkie 6y agoBear in mind, Nuance is often the voice technology behind other companies' speech-based products too. Nuance technology originally powered Siri, for example.
- qntmfred 6y agoNuance itself was actually spun out of an organization called SRI (note the resemblance to the name Siri)
- ocdtrekkie 6y agoThis is incorrect. Nuance was a company that originated decades ago, SRI did build Siri, using Nuance's speech technology, but Nuance itself did not spin out of SRI.
- qntmfred 6y agohttps://www.sri.com/hoi/natural-language-speech-recognition/ https://www.sri.com/hoi/natural-language-speech-recognition/ > SRI spun off market leader Nuance Communications to commercialize the technology https://hbr.org/2015/09/the-president-of-sri-ventures-on-bringing-siri-to-life https://hbr.org/2015/09/the-president-of-sri-ventures-on-bri...
- microtherion 6y agoThat's true, but technically, the company that is named "Nuance" today was originally named "ScanSoft". They bought the original Nuance and assumed its name. It's a bit like Symantec, which bought everything, including its name.
- Pokepokalypse 6y agoThe main IP Nuance took away from SRI was SRI's EduSpeak. Now: Nuance was spun off of SRI probably a decade or more before Siri was birthed in a Darpa program called CALO. CALO may have, in some implementations, used EduSpeak or it's lightweight cousin, Dynaspeak. But I'm pretty sure that when Siri was ALSO spun-off from SRI, and bought by Apple, that Apple did not want to pay the license fee for the EduSpeak code. So they used something else (which, AFAIR; was an Apple-confidential matter).
- raobit 6y agoIs Nuance into healthcare or speech/voice recognition? Didn't knew about the Siri thing though
- ocdtrekkie 6y agoNuance is a speech recognition company, but due to their on-premise software which has a lot of integration options and having custom distributions for medical and legal jargon, they tend to be a go-to choice for adding voice to professional highly-regulated industry platforms.
- RandallBrown 6y agoYes. My wife uses Dragon for her writing her clinical notes. It's apparently pretty popular.
- raobit 6y agoCan you link some source of nuance powering siri, i think SRI was where it was built
- ocdtrekkie 6y agoSRI built Siri using Nuance for the speech components, and Nuance continued to be used for Siri under Apple: https://techcrunch.com/2011/10/05/apple-siri-nuance/ https://techcrunch.com/2011/10/05/apple-siri-nuance/ https://appleinsider.com/articles/13/05/30/nuance-confirms-its-technology-is-behind-apples-siri https://appleinsider.com/articles/13/05/30/nuance-confirms-i...
- newsclues 6y agoI think the way carmakers are going the auto industry could justify most of the valuation.
- jpetso 6y agoNuance spun out their automotive business into Cerence in 2019, so they presumably have zero business with carmakers right now. There should be conditions not to compete with Cerence in the automotive market.
- Spooky23 6y agoNuance OEMs and sells backend systems for IVRs and all sorts of products. You probably interact with their stuff routinely and not even know it. They also bought up a lot of small companies and products from bigger companies and own a lot of patents.
- udev 6y agoAlso wasn't Siri based on Nuance technology? If so imagine them sales...
- raobit 6y agoCan you link some source of it, can't find it
- udev 6y agoLike this? https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/04/11/microsoft-in-talks-to-acquire-siri-speech-recognition-partner-nuance-for-16b https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/04/11/microsoft-in-talk...
- Pokepokalypse 6y agoWhen you're talking about Siri; you need to talk about the virtual assistant piece separate from the speech recognition piece. When Siri's ancestor was being worked on at SRI, it used a cousin of Nuance for the speech part. The PI of the virtual assistant piece of that program spun it out as a separate company, and was immediately snarfed up by Apple. At that time, they switched speech recognition providers; but I don't know if Apple picked Nuance specifically.
- ghc 6y agoKeep in mind that the company named Nuance is a big, 30 year old public company with a lot of products, which acquired Nuance and changed its name in 2005. According to Wikipedia they did $2 Billion USD in revenue in 2016 and had $5.7 Billion in assets.
- iudqnolq 6y agoYeah, but they've got their tentacles into a lot of complicated sticky markets. For example, they've done all the work to get that same software certified healthcare grade and convinced lots of hospitals to adopt it for their doctors. They can sell that for a lot more than they sell the essentially same software to you. If you go to a corporate website and see an "Industries" section with Healthcare, Telecommunications, Finance, Government, and more you know they're good at this sort of rent-seeking.
- bananaface 6y agoFWIW the acquisition was only 25ish percent above market value. In the public markets Nuance was worth something like $15 billion.