Combined company appoints John Collins as Chief Financial Officer
SoundHound AI, Inc. , a global leader in voice and agentic AI, announced the successful completion of its acquisition of LivePerson, Inc., and the appointment of John Collins as the combined company’s Chief Financial Officer.
With the transaction officially closed, SoundHound AI immediately expands its market footprint, with a customer base that includes 25 of the Fortune 100, and a strengthened IP portfolio of over 750 patents. The combination brings together LivePerson’s extensive enterprise digital messaging infrastructure with SoundHound’s proprietary voice agentic AI. LivePerson’s platform will be integrated into OASYS, SoundHound’s self-learning Orchestrated Agent System, which is the result of decades of innovation from SoundHound and its recent acquisitions. The unified platform will deliver a world-leading fully integrated, end-to-end customer engagement solution that operates natively across voice, web, mobile, SMS, and social channels.
“This merger represents a defining moment for the new agentic AI era. Together, we are delivering the most complete AI platform to the most comprehensive enterprise customer base in the industry,” said Keyvan Mohajer, CEO and Co-Founder of SoundHound AI. “Now global brands have a single, unified engine to power intelligent customer interactions — scaling SoundHound’s reach to serve every enterprise, on every channel, at an unprecedented level.”
Highlights of the closed transaction include a strong and fully debt-free combined balance sheet, establishing a resilient financial foundation for accelerated commercial growth and continuous product innovation. With expanded global scale, an enriched customer base spanning key enterprise verticals, and enhanced cross-selling capabilities, the unified company is strategically positioned to target more than $500M in future revenue from the existing customer base alone. The acquisition accelerates the combined company’s ability to address the rapid rise of agentic AI, with Gartner® forecasting that enterprise spend on the software will reach $985 billion by 2030.
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New Chief Financial Officer Appointed
Following an extensive executive search, SoundHound AI has selected John Collins to join the company as its Chief Financial Officer. As CFO, Collins will focus on accelerating SoundHound AI’s path to sustainable profitability, while maintaining its strong growth trajectory and disciplined approach to capital allocation.
Collins brings over 15 years of leadership experience at the intersection of enterprise software, data science, capital markets, corporate finance, and artificial intelligence. With a rare blend of operator expertise, financial stewardship, and entrepreneurial vision, he has previously been a founder, as well as Chief Financial Officer, Chief Operating Officer, and Interim Chief Executive Officer at LivePerson.
Throughout his career, Collins has consistently met the strategic and financial needs of the business, from supporting R&D innovation and high growth, to driving cost-optimization initiatives that yielded free cash flow and improved operational efficiency. Notably, Collins led a transformation from more than $100M of annual cash burn to positive free cash flow in a single year while supporting double-digit growth, executed cost-reduction programs in excess of $200M, and led multi-year debt restructurings that captured $227M of debt discount, improving liquidity and shifting enterprise value from debt holders to equity holders. This proven background in managing complex enterprise infrastructure equips Collins to drive the financial integration of SoundHound AI and LivePerson post-close, helping to create a world leader in AI for customer service.
The holder of both a JD and an MBA, Collins will oversee the combined company’s financial strategy with a focus on accelerating margin expansion, enforcing tight cost discipline, and driving seamless operational synergies to capitalize on SoundHound AI’s expanded footprint and the rapidly growing agentic AI market.
“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,” said John Collins, incoming CFO of SoundHound AI. “Backed by a strong, debt-free balance sheet and market momentum, my focus will be on driving seamless operational integration, enforcing cost discipline, and accelerating our path to sustainable, high-margin profitability.”
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Day One Combination Value
With the closing following regulatory and shareholder approvals, integration is actively underway to deliver immediate value to customers and shareholders:
- Unified Omnichannel Solutions: Enterprise customers can now deploy a single conversational AI platform capable of driving voice interactions, digital chat, and social messaging natively.
- Enhanced AI Capabilities for LivePerson Customers: SoundHound’s fully agentic platform, OASYS, 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.
- Smarter, Faster AI Across Every Channel: By combining SoundHound’s deep voice capabilities with LivePerson’s proven digital engagement, enterprise deployments benefit from an even richer foundation of customer interaction insights. This means higher containment rates, faster resolution times, and smoother experiences.
- Strengthened Financial Footprint: As part of the close, SoundHound has retired LivePerson’s outstanding debt, establishing a strong, debt-free balance sheet positioned to drive efficient growth.
“Our shared focus is clear: accelerate innovation and deliver immediate impact for our customers,” said John Sabino, CEO of LivePerson. “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.”
With the transaction closed, LivePerson common stock will cease trading on the Nasdaq stock market. Functional integration is already underway, with combined product offerings and expanded capabilities set to roll out to global clients in the coming quarters.
