SoundHound AI Inc. today announced a deal to acquire Amelia US LLC, an enterprise conversational artificial intelligence agent company, to expand its conversational and voice AI solutions for commerce.

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.

The company agreed to pay $80 million in cash and equity for Amelia. Although it’s unknown what Amelia’s valuation was at the time of the deal, the company has raised at least $189 million since launch, according to Pitchbook, including a $175 million round in March 2023 led by BuildGroup and Monroe Capital.

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.

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’s release of GPT-4o, which has a seemingly human-like conversation capability over voice and the latest Gemini Pro model 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.

Amelia boasts several customers who have pursued its AI conversational agent services including 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.

“SoundHound AI has emerged as a leader in bringing voice-enabled conversational AI to products and services,” said Keyvan Mohajer, co-founder and chief executive of SoundHound AI. “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.”

The company said the acquisition would permit the company to build towards its vision of bringing the technology to more commerce use cases. It recently acquired 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.

With Amelia on board, the company said it may now add commerce transactions with customers within healthcare, financial services, retail and vision. That would include opportunities such as making appointments, ordering services and purchasing tickets from SoundHound’s voice-enabled products.

Photo: SoundHound