It is the most recent signal Microsoft is trying to find extra development by acquisitions. The corporate can be reportedly in talks to purchase the chat app Discord for about $10 billion. On prime of that, Microsoft made an effort to purchase TikTok’s U.S. enterprise final yr for about $30 billion earlier than the deal was derailed.

The Nuance acquisition represents Microsoft’s largest acquisition because it purchased LinkedIn for greater than $26 billion in 2016. Final month, Microsoft accomplished its $7.6 billion acquisition of gaming firm Zenimax. Shares of Nuance have been up 21% in premarket buying and selling Monday. Microsoft shares have been barely constructive.

Nuance could be aligned with the a part of Microsoft’s enterprise that serves companies and governments. Nuance derives income by promoting instruments for recognizing and transcribing speech in physician’s visits, customer-service calls and voicemails. In its announcement Monday, Microsoft mentioned Nuance’s know-how will probably be used to reinforce Microsoft’s cloud merchandise for well being care, which have been launched final yr.

The corporate reported $7 million in web revenue on about $346 million in income in the fourth quarter of 2020, with income declining 4% on an annualized foundation. Nuance was based in 1992, and had 7,100 workers as of September 2020.

Microsoft mentioned Nuance’s CEO Mark Benjamin will stay on the firm and report back to Scott Guthrie, the Microsoft government answerable for the corporate’s cloud and synthetic intelligence companies.

Nuance has a robust fame for its voice recognition know-how, and it has been thought-about an acquisition goal for corporations like Apple, Microsoft and extra for a number of years. Microsoft has voice recognition constructed into lots of its merchandise already, however it has lately shut down some merchandise that includes its voice assistant Cortana.

This story is growing.

–CNBC’s Alex Sherman and Jordan Novet contributed to this report.