SoundHound AI Inc.
04/21/2026 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 04/21/2026 10:23
SoundHound AI To Acquire LivePerson, Combining Proprietary Voice Agentic AI and Digital Messaging to Create a World Leading End-to-End Omnichannel Conversational AI Platform[...]
SoundHound AI To Acquire LivePerson, Combining Proprietary Voice Agentic AI and Digital Messaging to Create a World Leading End-to-End Omnichannel Conversational AI Platform
| ● | Transaction results in one of the most comprehensive enterprise customer footprints in the conversational AI sector, including 25 of the Fortune 100 |
| ● | Combined company expects a $500M revenue opportunity, accelerated path to profitability, strong balance sheet, and no debt |
SANTA CLARA, Calif., and NEW YORK, April 21, 2026 - SoundHound AI, Inc. (Nasdaq: SOUN), a global leader in voice and conversational AI, and LivePerson (Nasdaq: LPSN), a pioneer in enterprise conversational AI serving hundreds of enterprise and mid-market brands, today announced they have entered into a definitive agreement under which SoundHound will acquire LivePerson. The combination unifies SoundHound's industry-leading voice and agentic AI platform with LivePerson's digital engagement capabilities, which power one billion customer messages per month. The acquisition will also deliver additional revenue and scale to SoundHound AI, enhancing the company's leadership position as a provider of voice and agentic AI to many of the world's premier enterprise businesses.
The combined company will work with enterprise customers across 30+ countries, including 12 of the top 15 global banks, 4 of the top 5 global airlines, 4 of the top 5 global automakers, and 10+ of the leading global telecommunications providers. LivePerson brings hundreds of long-tenured enterprise relationships, many spanning over a decade, adding to SoundHound's expanding customer roster which includes thousands of restaurants, leading global automakers, and enterprise customers across financial services, healthcare, insurance, energy, and retail.
Combined with LivePerson's customers, the transaction creates one of the most comprehensive customer footprints in the conversational AI sector.
The acquisition will also mark SoundHound's further expansion into AI-driven digital customer service, building out the company's omnichannel capabilities across text and chat-based applications. LivePerson's Conversational Cloud brings deeply rooted integrations across enterprise systems, with proven capabilities in messaging, chat, and digital orchestration spanning web, mobile, and social channels.
The combined platform will offer enterprise customers a single, end-to-end integrated solution for managing the full lifecycle of customer conversations across both voice and digital channels - addressing one of the most consistent requests from both companies' customer bases.
"This transformational combination brings together two complementary conversational AI pioneers. SoundHound and LivePerson will define the future of agentic customer service, helping businesses replace fragmented legacy technologies with best-in-class multimodal experiences for the AI-driven era ahead of us," said Keyvan Mohajer, CEO and Co-Founder of SoundHound AI. "Our combined customers will realize immediate value through expanded capabilities and enhanced scale. And by leveraging our unified conversational datasets, we are accelerating the evolution of our already powerful agentic AI platform to ensure impressive precision and market-leading performance."
"The artificial boundaries between 'talking' and 'typing' are disappearing. Consumers expect to start a complex request over the phone and finish it seamlessly via text or web messaging, without ever repeating themselves or losing context," said John Sabino, CEO of LivePerson. "Historically, orchestrating a strategy across both voice and digital channels meant juggling multiple specialized vendors. This acquisition changes that dynamic. By bringing SoundHound's cutting-edge, proprietary voice AI and LivePerson's premier digital messaging together under one roof, we will offer the industry's most complete portfolio of customer engagement solutions."
Combination Business Highlights:
| ● | Unified Voice and Digital Platform: Combining the complementary strengths of SoundHound's agentic voice AI and LivePerson's Conversational Cloud creates the world's leading end-to-end omnichannel conversational AI platform, supporting the full customer lifecycle across hundreds of prominent enterprise brands. |
| ● | Enhanced AI Capabilities for LivePerson Customers: SoundHound's fully agentic platform and AI models will deliver improvements in performance, user experience, containment, and overall customer health across LivePerson's enterprise customer base spanning digital and voice channels. |
| ● | Expanded Customer Base and Vertical Diversification: The combination brings together two highly complementary customer bases, creating one of the most comprehensive enterprise customer footprints in the sector - deepening SoundHound's presence in core verticals like financial services, telecommunications, and healthcare while extending its reach into verticals including travel, hospitality, and retail. |
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| ● | Upsell and Cross-Sell Opportunities: SoundHound's voice AI will be offered to LivePerson's digital customers, one of the most frequently requested capabilities from LivePerson's customer base. |
| ● | Strengthening the Combined Business: SoundHound's strong balance sheet, engineering scale, and proven AI innovation will strengthen the combined business by reinforcing the long-term financial stability enterprise customers require from mission critical technology partners, accelerating platform modernization initiatives already underway, and ensuring the continued AI innovation required to stay ahead of evolving enterprise customer needs. |
| ● | Data Advantage: Combining SoundHound's billions of voice interactions annually with LivePerson's one billion digital messages per month creates a combined data foundation of tens of billions of customer interactions annually - strengthening model performance, orchestration, and enterprise-grade automation outcomes. |
| ● | Proven Acquisition Track Record: LivePerson marks SoundHound's fifth strategic acquisition, continuing a disciplined approach to developing a purpose-built full-service enterprise AI business following successful integrations of Amelia, Interactions, and others, accumulating over 120 years of combined customer relationships and enterprise integrations. |
Acquisition Financials:
| ● | SoundHound is acquiring LivePerson for an equity value of $43M, representing approximately a 22% premium over the corresponding 30-day volume-weighted average value. |
| ● | At closing, SoundHound expects to receive $74M of LivePerson's cash balance prior to repayment of the 2026 Convertible Senior Notes. After taking into account significant discounts on LivePerson's remaining debt, the transaction implies a total enterprise value of $250M. |
| ● | At closing, SoundHound will retire the discounted debt with a mix of cash and equity, at SoundHound's discretion. The combined company is expected to have a strong balance sheet with no debt. |
| ● | SoundHound expects its 2027 revenue range will be, at minimum, $350M-$400M, with at least $100M of growable contribution from LivePerson's long-tenured customers. |
| ● | By offering SoundHound's voice AI to LivePerson's customers, and the unified digital and voice omnichannel solution to SoundHound's customers, the combined business is expected to reach $500M, based on the existing customer base alone. |
The transaction is expected to close in the second half of 2026, subject to customary regulatory approvals and closing conditions.
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Advisors:
Barclays is serving as financial advisor to SoundHound AI, and Latham & Watkins LLP is serving as legal advisor.
Lazard is serving as financial advisor to LivePerson, with Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP serving as legal advisor.
Learn more about SoundHound AI here.
About SoundHound AI
SoundHound AI (Nasdaq: SOUN), a global leader in voice and conversational AI, delivers solutions that allow businesses to offer superior experiences to their customers. Built on proprietary technology, SoundHound's voice AI delivers best-in-class speed and accuracy in numerous languages to product creators and service providers across retail, financial services, healthcare, automotive, telecom, smart devices, and restaurants. The company's groundbreaking AI-driven products include Smart Answering, Smart Ordering, Dynamic Drive-Thru, and the Amelia Platform, which powers AI Agents for enterprise. In addition, SoundHound's Agentic AI for Automotive and Autonomics, a category-leading operations platform that automates IT processes, have enabled SoundHound to power millions of products and services, and process billions of interactions each year for world-class businesses. www.soundhound.com
About LivePerson.
LivePerson (NASDAQ: LPSN) is the enterprise leader in predictable conversational AI. The world's leading brands use our award-winning Conversational Cloud and Syntrix platforms to connect with millions of customers. We power nearly a billion messages every month, providing uniquely rich data analytics, agent training, and AI evaluation tools to unlock the power of conversational AI for better business outcomes. Learn more at liveperson.com.
Media Contacts:
Fiona McEvoy
Riah Lawry
SoundHound AI Inc. published this content on April 21, 2026, and is solely responsible for the information contained herein. Distributed via EDGAR on April 21, 2026 at 16:23 UTC. If you believe the information included in the content is inaccurate or outdated and requires editing or removal, please contact us at [email protected]