Speech and imaging solutions provider Nuance Communications, Inc. (NUAN) Wednesday said it has acquired Thames Valley, London - based global voice-to-text services provider SpinVox for about US$ 102.5 million. Burlington, Massachusetts - based Nuance expects that the addition would leverage its voice-to-text business and to expand its service quality, global reach, and innovation.
Total purchase value included US$ 66 million in cash and US$ 36.5 million, or about 2.3 million Nuance common shares.
SpinVox was founded in 2003 and had over 1,30,000 regular users, with a customer retention rate of 80%. The technology provided by the company supports clients to read voicemails as text and to convert speech to texts for SMS, e-mails, blog posts or social network updates. In July, SpinVox asked staff to take some of their pay in the form of share options to help the company achieve profitability, said reports.
Nuance noted that as the estimated number of operational voicemail boxes in the world has passed one billion, and consumer and corporate activity now generate over 150 billion voicemails a year, both the companies have experienced strong interest in voice-to-text automation.
John Pollard, vice president, Nuance Voice-to-Text Services, said, "With SpinVox's robust infrastructure, language support and operational experience, we will broaden the reach and capabilities of our platform."
NUAN is currently trading at $15.98, down 0.18%, on a volume of 553 thousand shares on the Nasdaq.
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