Nuance Acquires SpinVox

After weeks of speculation, enterprise-grade speech-to-text processing firm Nuance acquires SpinVox in a deal worth $102.5 million. Once a promising startup, SpinVox has struggled with debt.

Nuance Communications said Dec. 30 it has acquired SpinVox for $66 million in cash and 2.3 million shares of Nuance common shares for a deal worth $102.5 million. SpinVox, a voice-to-text services provider, has been rumored in play for several weeks after struggling to repay a $48.8 million loan, although the original rumored selling price of $150 million came up considerably short of the final Nuance offer.

SpinVox raised $100 million last year in a $500 million valuation.

Nuance is an enterprise-grade speech-to-text processing firm with more than 40 carrier relationships. The deal brings SpinVox customers Bell Mobility, Rogers Wireless, Vodafone Spain and Skype into Nuance's fold. The two companies helped pioneer solutions that utilize speech recognition and transcription workflow solutions to convert voicemails into text that can be sent to users as SMS or e-mail messages.

"Around the world, the voice-to-text market has experienced tremendous growth over the last year, with a variety of innovative services being delivered by carriers and unified communications providers," John Pollard, vice president of Nuance Voice-to-Text Services, said in a statement. "With SpinVox's robust infrastructure, language support and operational experience, we will broaden the reach and capabilities of our platform."

According to Nuance, the deal gives Nuance the broadest language support in the industry, including English, Spanish, German, Italian, French and Portuguese, and a customer list that includes major carriers throughout North America, Europe, South America and Australia.