Nuance to Spin Off Automotive as Public Company, ‘Wind Down’ Consumer Devices

Nuance Communications will spin off its automotive voice-control business as a separate publicly traded company in late 2019 and will “wind down” its subscription revenue services (SRS) and consumer devices operations because they're “non-core” to Nuance’s artificial intelligence “strengths” in “conversational AI solutions” for the healthcare and enterprise sectors, said CEO Mark Benjamin Monday on an earnings call. To phase out SRS, “we will see customer content contracts through completion over the next 12 to 24 months and not take new business,” he said. Nuance also will manage its remaining royalty contracts in consumer devices “and seek opportunities to monetize IP and source code in one-time deals,” he said. Nuance voice and virtual assistance technology for car infotainment and communication systems is installed in more than 50 million new cars each year “and can be found in more than 200 million cars on the road,” said Benjamin. As part of Nuance, the automotive business was straining to compete for “resources” with other company “segments and priorities,” he said. As a separate company, automotive “will be exclusively focused on its own opportunity, and thus better positioned to invest in the tools needed to pursue it,” he said.