SoundHound AI has announced a definitive agreement to acquire LivePerson in an all-stock deal valuing the target's equity at approximately $43 million, a 22% premium to LivePerson's 30-day volume-weighted average price. The total enterprise value is approximately $250 million, including LivePerson's debt, which SoundHound plans to retire. Wedbush maintained its Outperform rating and $12 price target on SoundHound shares following the announcement. The firm highlighted the strategic value of combining SoundHound's voice AI with LivePerson's digital messaging platform, which processes one billion customer messages monthly. The combined company projects $350 million to $400 million in revenue for 2027, with a long-term opportunity of $500 million from the existing customer base. SoundHound shares rose nearly 5% to around $8 on the announcement day. The deal is expected to close in the second half of 2026.

SoundHound AI to acquire LivePerson. The combination unifies SoundHound's voice and agentic AI platform with LivePerson's digital engagement capabilities. SoundHound AI, Inc., a global company in voice and conversational AI, and LivePerson, a company in enterprise conversational AI, have entered into a definitive agreement under which SoundHound will acquire LivePerson. The combination unifies SoundHound's voice and agentic AI platform with LivePerson's digital engagement capabilities. 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 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 realise 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 specialised 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. * 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 modernisation 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. The transaction is expected to close in the second half of 2026, subject to customary regulatory approvals and closing conditions. The Martechvibe team works with a staff of in-house writers, and industry experts. View More

SoundHound AI To Acquire LivePerson to Create A World Leading End-to-End Omnichannel Conversational AI Platform...