Microsoft today said it reached a $19.7 billion, all-cash deal to buy Nuance Communications, which provides speech recognition software for health care providers, in a move to boost its industry-specific cloud services.

Nuance will double Microsoft’s total addressable market in health care to about $500 billion.

The acquisition is the software giant’s second largest under CEO Sataya Nadella, who paid $26.2 billion for LinkedIn in 2016.

Microsoft expects the transaction to close this year. At that time, Mark Benjamin will remain CEO of Nuance, and he will report to Scott Guthrie, executive vice president of Cloud and AI at Microsoft.

Nuance, founded in 1992, pioneered conversational artificial intelligence (AI) and speech recognition technology. Its software is widely used in hospitals and health care clinics, and Nuance claims more than 55% of physicians and 75% of radiologists in the U.S., and 77% of U.S. hospitals use its products. Nuance’s Healthcare Cloud revenue grew 37% year-over-year during the company’s fiscal year 2020, which ended September 2020.

The companies first partnered in 2019, and Microsoft says the acquisition will further its efforts to provide health-care specific cloud services. Last year, Microsoft launched its Cloud for Healthcare, and Nuance’s clinical speech recognition products including the Dragon Ambient eXperience, Dragon Medical One, and PowerScribe One for radiology reporting are built on Microsoft Azure.

“Nuance provides the AI layer at the healthcare point of delivery and is a pioneer in the real-world application of enterprise AI,” Nadella said in a statement. “AI is technology’s most important priority, and healthcare is its most urgent application.”

Nuance also provides enterprise AI software including interactive voice response, virtual assistants, and digital and biometric products, and Microsoft plans to fold these into Azure and Teams.