Kofax to buy Nuance's imaging division for $400M in cash

Some consolidation and subsequent divestment are in play in the worlds of imaging and voice recognition. Today, Kofax and Nuance announced that Kofax would be acquiring Nuance's imaging division, for $400 million in cash. The deal, which had been rumoured in recent days, is expected to close in Q1 2019. The acquisition is a notable move for Kofax -- itself acquired by Thoma Bravo last year in a $1.5 billion deal -- as it continues to build up its business in Robotic Process Automation (RPA), the area of enterprise IT services that uses machine learning, computer vision and other AI-based tools to bring automation to repetitive or mundane back-office tasks that would have in the past been done by humans. On the side of Nuance, the company is a leader in voice recognition services that served as an early partner to the likes of Apple with Siri, and has also worked on a number of other AI-based solutions to improve how enterprises build services and work.