Microsoft is in advanced discussions to acquire artificial intelligence company Nuance Communications for around $16 billion, according to a report from Reuters, Monday.
The price being negotiated could give Nuance a value of around $56 per share, although conditions may still change, the report said.
If completed, Nuance could have an equity worth around $16 billion, figures compiled by Bloomberg show.
Sources said that an agreement could be announced as soon as Monday. Business Insider reached out to both companies for comment but they could not be reached.
The deal would be Microsoft's second biggest buyout ever, following its $26.2 billion deal to acquire LinkedIn in 2016 for $24 billion.
Massachusetts-based Nuance is the developer of the Dragon Naturally Speaking family of voice technology products.
The speech recognition software of Nuance, with a market cap of around $13 billion, is the basis for Apple's voice assistant Siri as well as dozens of other real-world apps with enterprise clients.
Nuance and Microsoft have partnered since 2019 on technologies like enabling physicians to capture voice conversations from patient visits and input data into digital medical files.
Like many tech companies, Microsoft has poured huge amount of money into artificial intelligence in recent years.
In 2018, Microsoft bought XOXCO, a company that develops conversational artificial intelligence, also known as "chatbots."
Two years after, Microsoft launched a supercomputer for artificial intelligence work equipped with 285,000 processor cores.
Microsoft has also bought companies like GitHub and Skype, but it failed to win a bid to buy TikTok last year.
