Lernout & Hauspie NV, the Belgian speech recognition company, has agreed to acquire another of the companies founded by speech technology pioneer Ray Kurzweil. Last year L&H acquired computer dictation company Kurzweil Applied Intelligence Inc for $53m, after it was laid low by fraudulent accounting practices (CI No 3,141). Kurzweil Educational Systems Inc, a developer of educational software for reading assistance, is to be acquired for $20m, which may be paid in L&H stock or cash. L&H says it will integrate its text-to-speech technology into Kurzweil software, which is used in 1,500 schools and educational systems. The software is currently targeted at students with learning disabilities or vision impairments, but products aimed at students worldwide learning to read are under development. A number of patent-pending Kurzweil speech technologies ended up inside the educational software, and L&H says it intends to leverage many of them, along with the expertise of Kurzweil 12 linguists and engineers. Ray Kurzweil, who has been serving a dual role as chairman and CEO of KESI, and chief technologist of L&H’s Dictation division, will expand his technology advisory role within L&H. There are still two other Kurzweil companies: Kurzweil Technologies Inc, a company advising clients on how to deal with patents and technology assets, and Kurzweil Music Systems, which produces computer-based music products.
