SoundHound AI Completes Acquisition of LivePerson

What closed on September 4

SoundHound AI (Nasdaq: SOUN) announced on September 4, 2026 that it had completed its acquisition of LivePerson, the conversational-AI and digital-messaging company that once counted HSBC, Delta Air Lines and T-Mobile among its clients. LivePerson stockholders voted to approve the deal on September 2, 2026, clearing the way for the transaction to close two days later. With the close, LivePerson common stock stopped trading on Nasdaq, and its business -- and roughly 1,200 employees -- now sit inside SoundHound.

"This merger represents a defining moment for the new agentic AI era," said Keyvan Mohajer, CEO and co-founder of SoundHound AI. "Together, we are delivering the most complete AI platform to the most comprehensive enterprise customer base in the industry." John Sabino, LivePerson's CEO, framed the deal from his side as a resourcing question as much as a technology one: "Our shared focus is clear: accelerate innovation and deliver immediate impact for our customers. Together, we offer an unparalleled value proposition for enterprises seeking to modernize their contact centers and digital touchpoints with a trusted, enterprise-grade AI partner."

Source: SoundHound AI newsroom, September 4, 2026.

How the deal was structured

SoundHound first announced the acquisition on April 21, 2026, offering LivePerson shareholders SoundHound common stock valued at approximately $3.33 per LivePerson share at the time -- about a 22% premium over LivePerson's 30-day volume-weighted average price before the announcement. As part of closing, the two companies also completed note-restructuring transactions that exchanged LivePerson's secured debt for a mix of SoundHound equity and cash, which is what let SoundHound describe the combined entity as debt-free the moment the deal closed, rather than inheriting LivePerson's balance-sheet problems along with its customer base.

Alongside the close, SoundHound named John Collins as the combined company's incoming Chief Financial Officer. Collins is not an outside hire -- he previously served as founder, CFO, COO and interim CEO at LivePerson itself, where he is credited with turning the company from more than $100 million in annual cash burn to positive free cash flow in a single year, executing over $200 million in cost-reduction programs, and capturing $227 million of debt discount through prior restructurings. "Joining SoundHound AI at this pivotal juncture is an extraordinary opportunity to help steer the company's next phase of global growth at a time of rapid agentic AI adoption by large enterprises," Collins said. Putting the executive who nursed LivePerson through its restructuring in charge of the combined company's finances signals that SoundHound is leaning on his track record to keep the newly-acquired business from becoming a drag on its own numbers.

Why LivePerson needed a buyer

LivePerson was not a distressed shell when SoundHound came calling, but it was a company that had fallen hard from its peak. Founded in 1995 by Robert LoCascio, LivePerson essentially invented commercial web chat in 1997 and spent two decades building that into a conversational-AI business serving roughly 18,000 clients. Its stock lost about 80% of its value starting in August 2023, and single-day cratered a further 47% after LivePerson's February 2024 earnings call, when management disclosed an unexpected $100 million revenue loss tied to customer churn. LoCascio stepped down as CEO and left the board on August 7, 2023, and the company spent the two years since under new leadership trying to stabilize before ultimately agreeing to sell.

That history matters for reading this deal correctly: SoundHound isn't just buying LivePerson's roughly 18,000-client roster and its enterprise messaging integrations into channels like SMS and web chat -- it's buying a company whose core conversational-AI technology was once considered class-leading, at a price shaped by years of shareholder losses rather than by a bidding war.

The buyer's own trajectory

SoundHound went public via a SPAC merger on April 28, 2022, and grew revenue from roughly $13 million in 2020 to about $85 million in 2024, a 60% compound annual growth rate, built largely on voice-ordering deployments for restaurant chains including Chipotle, Krispy Kreme and Papa John's, plus in-car voice assistants for automakers. Nvidia was an early SoundHound shareholder before exiting its position entirely by the end of 2024. LivePerson is not SoundHound's first bolt-on acquisition in conversational AI -- it previously acquired restaurant-ordering firms SYNQ3 and Allset, along with enterprise conversational-AI vendors Amelia and Interactions, before turning to LivePerson as its largest deal yet.

SoundHound says LivePerson's platform will be folded into OASYS, its self-learning Orchestrated Agent System, so that a single deployment can run natively across voice, web, mobile, SMS and social channels rather than treating voice and digital messaging as separate products. SoundHound is targeting $500 million in future revenue from the combined, existing customer base alone, and points to Gartner's forecast that enterprise agentic AI software spending will reach $985 billion by 2030 as the backdrop for the bet.

Sources: Yahoo Finance, September 4, 2026; LivePerson company history.