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SoundHound AI Inc. today\u00a0<\/span>announced<\/span><\/a> a deal to acquire <\/span>Amelia US LLC<\/span><\/a>, an enterprise conversational artificial intelligence agent company, to expand its conversational and voice AI solutions for commerce.<\/span><\/p>\n SoundHound has developed technologies for voice AI that understand natural speech and allow people to interface with technology such as vehicles, services, devices and apps. It also provides companies with a voice-enabled digital assistant built with generative AI and launched a music recognition mobile app.<\/span><\/p>\n The company agreed to pay $80 million in cash and equity for Amelia. Although it\u2019s unknown what Amelia\u2019s valuation was at the time of the <\/span>deal,<\/span> the company has raised at least $189 million since launch, according to Pitchbook<\/a>, including <\/span>a $175 million round<\/span><\/a> in March 2023 led by BuildGroup and Monroe Capital.<\/span><\/p>\n As part of the deal, SoundHound will assume debt accrued by Amelia. Upon closing, the combined company will hold about $160 million in cash and $39 million in debt.<\/span><\/p>\n This acquisition follows a trend in the industry towards more AI models becoming multimodal, especially with companies pushing for increased automated interaction with voice. Prominent examples include OpenAI\u2019s release of <\/span>GPT-4o<\/span>, which has a seemingly human-like conversation capability over voice and the latest <\/span>Gemini Pro model<\/span> from Google LLC. Google has also released a far more interactive and intuitive Google Assistant using its AI models on new Android phones using generative AI.<\/span><\/p>\n Amelia boasts several customers who have pursued its AI conversational agent services <\/span>including<\/span> hospitality company Resorts World Las Vegas LLC, Japanese technology firm Fujitsu Ltd., hospice and home care company Avenna Healthcare LLC and Hoffman Financial Group Inc.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cSoundHound AI has emerged as a leader in bringing voice-enabled conversational AI to products and services,\u201d said Keyvan Mohajer, co-founder and chief executive of SoundHound AI. \u201cNow <\/span>with<\/span> more businesses choosing voice AI technology for customer service \u2013 and more consumers expecting a seamless, AI-powered service \u2013 this acquisition positions SoundHound as a strong force with range, scale, and world-class technology.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The company said the acquisition would permit the company to build towards its vision of bringing the technology to more commerce use cases. It\u00a0<\/span>recently acquired<\/span><\/a> the online food ordering platform Allset, which connects restaurants with local customers. SoundHound used that acquisition to speed up plans to bring voice transactions onto its voice-enabled devices such as vehicles and TVs for food ordering.<\/span><\/p>\n With Amelia on board, the company said it may now add commerce transactions with customers within healthcare, financial services, retail and vision. <\/span>That<\/span>\u00a0would include opportunities such as making appointments, ordering services and purchasing tickets from SoundHound\u2019s voice-enabled products.<\/span><\/p>\nPhoto: SoundHound<\/h5>\n