SpeechWorks was a company founded in the late 1990s in Boston that developed and supported speech-related computer software. The company was purchased in mid-2003 by Peabody, Massachusetts-based Nuance Communications, which was then known as ScanSoft.
SpeechWorks' major products were speech recognition and synthesis systems, which were merged with ScanSoft's speech product line. The name SpeechWorks was reincarnated as the brand name for all of ScanSoft's networked and embedded speech solutions until the merger with Nuance.
SpeechWorks enjoyed a close relationship with America Online through its voice-portal infrastructure partner Quack.com which licensed SpeechWorks' technology and was acquired by AOL. SpeechWorks technology has been employed with major AOL brands including Moviefone through Quack's voice services.
SpeechWorks purchased Ithaca, New York-based Eloquent Technologies, Inc. in 2000 for $17 million.
Speechwords was originally named ALTech (Applied Language Technology) and did early demonstrations the ShowNTel platform created by Technically Speaking, Inc. which was ultimately sold to Brooktrout