Microsoft announced a $20 billion acquisition of Nuance this past week and Voicebot invited four experts in the field to help break down why the deal makes sense and what it means for the industry. 

Kavita Reddi is co-founder of Voxta, a provider of automated speech recognition technology for call centers and embedded products. 

Tom Hebner is vice president of Nueraflash and previously spent a dozen years as head of innovation for voice and AI technology at Nuance. 

Nate Treloar is co-founder and president of Orbita a leading provider of conversational AI technologies to healthcare providers. 

Paul Sweeney is co-founder and EVP of product at Webio a conversational AI middleware provider for contacts centers in financial services and collections.