By Colin Kellaher

Shares of Nuance Communications Inc. rose more than 20% in premarket trading Monday after Bloomberg reported that Microsoft Corp. is near a deal to buy the artificial-intelligence company for about $16 billion.

The Redmond, Wash., technology giant could announce as early as Monday an agreement to buy Burlington, Mass.-based Nuance for about $56 a share, Bloomberg reports, citing familiar with the matter.

That would represent a roughly 23% premium to Friday's closing price of $45.58 for Nuance and is above the stock's 52-week high of $51.62 reached in February.

Nuance shares were recently up 21.6% to $55.44 in premarket trading, while Microsoft shares edged up less than 1%.

Write to Colin Kellaher at colin.kellaher@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

April 12, 2021 06:12 ET (10:12 GMT)

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