In 1996 Charles Schwab customers could call in, say a company's name, and hear its stock price. The software that understood them, accents and all, came from Nuance, a spinoff of SRI International's speech lab in Menlo Park. A year later UPS used Nuance to answer calls about packages. By the end of 1999 more than 150 businesses had licensed it, from Fidelity and American Airlines to Sears and British Telecommunications.

Out of SRI's Speech Lab

Nuance began in 1994, when it took a license to SRI International's patents and software for voice interfaces. That license was exclusive until December 1999, when Nuance let the exclusivity lapse. Its first name was Corona Corporation. The bet was that call centers would pay to replace touch-tone menus with plain speech. Big customers mattered. Schwab alone made up 16 percent of revenue in 1997, and reseller Periphonics made up 25 percent in 1999.

A Name That Outlived It

Nuance sold 4.5 million shares at $17 in April 2000, raising $76.5 million, and listed on Nasdaq as NUAN. In September 2005 ScanSoft, a scanning and character recognition company, acquired Nuance and adopted its name. The combined Nuance grew into a major speech company with headquarters in Burlington, Massachusetts. Microsoft bought it for $19.7 billion, including debt, in a deal completed in March 2022.

Cover: Conglomerate Peaks of Echo, Andrew Joseph Russell. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for Echo Canyon (a voice that answers back).