SoundHound AI (Nasdaq: SOUN) is acquiring LivePerson (Nasdaq: LPSN) in a deal that unites two of the enterprise conversational AI sector’s most established players — and positions the combined company as a single-vendor solution for businesses managing customer engagement across both voice and digital channels.
A Strategic Fit Years in the Making
SoundHound has built its reputation on proprietary voice and agentic AI, while LivePerson has spent decades embedding its Conversational Cloud into the enterprise messaging infrastructure of some of the world’s largest brands. Together, the two companies serve a customer base that spans 30-plus countries, including 25 of the Fortune 100, 12 of the top 15 global banks, 4 of the top 5 global airlines, and more than 10 leading telecommunications providers. That combined footprint creates one of the most comprehensive enterprise customer bases in the conversational AI sector.
Critically, the deal addresses a gap that both companies’ customers have consistently flagged. Enterprises have long been forced to stitch together separate voice and digital vendors to manage the full customer conversation lifecycle — a fragmented approach that introduces complexity, inconsistency, and cost. This acquisition eliminates that constraint by bringing both capabilities under one roof.
What Each Side Brings
SoundHound contributes its fully agentic AI platform, billions of annual voice interactions, engineering scale, and a strong balance sheet. LivePerson adds its Conversational Cloud — a deeply integrated digital engagement layer that currently processes roughly one billion customer messages per month — along with hundreds of long-tenured enterprise relationships, many stretching back more than a decade.
Combining those data assets creates a foundation of tens of billions of customer interactions annually, which should meaningfully strengthen both companies’ AI model performance and enterprise automation outcomes going forward.
The Commercial Case
On the financial side, SoundHound is acquiring LivePerson at an equity value of $43 million, representing roughly a 22% premium to the 30-day volume-weighted average. The transaction implies a total enterprise value of $250 million after accounting for significant discounts on LivePerson’s remaining debt. At closing, SoundHound expects to receive $74 million of LivePerson’s cash balance prior to repayment of its 2026 Convertible Senior Notes, and the combined company is expected to carry no debt.
Revenue expectations are ambitious. SoundHound projects its 2027 revenue range will reach at least $350 million to $400 million, with LivePerson’s existing customer base contributing at least $100 million in growable revenue. Looking further out, by cross-selling voice AI to LivePerson’s digital customers and offering the unified omnichannel solution across SoundHound’s existing base, the combined company sees a path to $500 million — based solely on the customers it already serves today.
Execution Confidence Backed by a Track Record
This marks SoundHound’s fifth strategic acquisition, following its integrations of Amelia, Interactions, and others. That track record matters. Enterprise customers buying mission-critical AI infrastructure need confidence that their vendor will be around, well-capitalized, and capable of sustained innovation — and SoundHound’s history of disciplined deal-making supports that narrative.
The transaction is expected to close in the second half of 2026, pending customary regulatory approvals. Barclays and Latham & Watkins advised SoundHound; Lazard and Fried Frank advised LivePerson.
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.
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