SoundHound AI Acquires Amelia

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SoundHound AI, Inc., a global provider of voice artificial intelligence, announced the acquisition of Amelia, an enterprise AI software company. The business combination positions SoundHound AI as the foremost provider of voice and conversational generative AI, with reach across multiple industries – including retail, financial services, healthcare, automotive, smart devices, restaurants, and more.

The companies will bring together decades of experience in conversational AI – and highly complementary product portfolios – to offer best-in-class, scalable customer service support to a vast spectrum of businesses. These include some of the very largest multinational enterprise brands, top 15 global banks, and Fortune 500 organisations, with the combined company spanning nearly 200 marquee customers.

For SoundHound AI, the deal marks a significant and strategic expansion of its existing customer service pillar, adding breadth and depth to a division that has seen substantial growth amid the accelerated adoption of voice and conversational genAI solutions. The acquisition positions the company at the centre of this burgeoning space, as enterprise spending on genAI is forecast to gather more momentum, reaching between $175 billion and $250 billion by 2027 (McKinsey, June 2024). Customer service is identified as a key area for disruption.

Combination Synergies:

• Leading Position In Conversational AI: Combination of AI expertise, proprietary technology, complementary product offerings, and extensive cross-industry deployment gives the unified company a distinct competitive advantage in the burgeoning conversational AI space
• Vertical Expansion Into Large Addressable Markets: Introduces new, sizable vertical industries – massively increasing the combined company’s addressable markets – with reach into industries such as healthcare, insurance, financial services, and retail, with the potential for more
• Diversification of Customer Base: Hundreds of large enterprise brands, with no single customer accounting for more than 10% of total combined revenue
• Revenue and Cost Advantages: Unlocks cross-selling and up-selling revenue opportunities, while SoundHound’s proprietary tech and cloud migration is expected to create cost savings
• New Monetisation Opportunities: Expansive voice commerce opportunities, from ordering food, to buying tickets, and making appointments from millions of devices powered by SoundHound AI
• Integrations and Capabilities: Deep integration with multiple large enterprise customers and channel partners as well as a global presence that includes a strong R&D centre in Bangalore, India

As well as accelerating and scaling SoundHound AI’s customer service offering, this move also allows the company’s vision of a voice commerce ecosystem to become more ambitious in its scope. With its recent acquisition of food ordering marketplace Allset, SoundHound AI began to expedite plans to bring voice transactions – like food ordering – to its range of voice-enabled products, including vehicles, TVs, and devices. Now Amelia brings new industries to this monetization pillar, with the potential to add consumer transactions across healthcare, financial services, and retail to the vision.

“SoundHound AI has emerged as a leader in bringing voice-enabled conversational AI to products and services. Now with more businesses choosing voice AI technology for customer service – and more consumers expecting a seamless, AI-powered service – this acquisition positions SoundHound as a strong force with range, scale, and world class technology,” said Keyvan Mohajer, CEO and Co-Founder of SoundHound AI. “Amelia is an innovative company that shares our passion for AI-fueled conversations. We are looking forward to leveraging our shared capabilities to offer the best AI customer support solutions available anywhere.”

“We’re excited to bring Amelia’s experience and relationships to SoundHound AI, bolstering the company’s growing AI customer service business to form a new category leader in the space,” said Lanham Napier, President of Amelia and Co-Founder of BuildGroup. “With impressive penetration into a range of vertical industries, proprietary technology, and decades of combined AI experience, SoundHound is well positioned to take advantage of burgeoning interest in conversational AI customer support.”