Vonage Plans To Buy Voice AI Provider Over.ai

The deal positions Vonage to ‘lead the revolution from Voice over IP to Voice over AI’ in building products that can make interactions smarter, which is key for partners selling voice and contact center solutions, says Omar Javaid, president of Vonage’s API Platform Group.

Cloud communications provider Vonage has revealed its plan to acquire Over.ai, a Tel Aviv-based conversational artificial intelligence specialist for enterprise communications.

Holmdel, N.J.-based Vonage is poised to gain Over.ai’s voice AI platform, as well as its technical engineering team of 23 staffers, via the terms of the deal, the company said Tuesday. The deal will help Vonage build out its speech-to-text and natural language processing capabilities for its business services products.

The two companies did not disclose financial terms of the deal.

[Related: Vonage Channel Chief: 'We Are An Enterprise Solutions Provider']

Over.ai specializes in voice AI for businesses and call centers. The provider's core product features natural conversational abilities in multiple languages, including English, Hebrew and German. The platform offers virtual assistant functionality through APIs, which allows businesses to handle complex interactions with real-time humanlike interactions via phone calls and speech-to-text algorithms, the company said.

The deal positions Vonage to "lead the revolution from Voice over IP to Voice over AI" in building products that can make interactions smarter, an important differentiator for channel partners selling voice and contact center solutions today, Omar Javaid, president of Vonage’s API Platform Group, said in an email to CRN.

"Combining Over.ai's technology with the award-winning OneVonage platform presents a tremendous opportunity for our partners to create new, cutting-edge customer experiences, extending the needs and use cases our partners are able to address for their customers," Javaid said. "This empowers both our partner and developer ecosystem by bringing new capabilities and depth to our platform over time."

Vonage said the deal is set to grow its Tel Aviv-based research and development team to more than 100 professionals.

Vonage last year spent $350 million on privately owned Contact-Center-as-a-Service company NewVoiceMedia in its biggest acquisition to date. The deal gave Vonage a full voice offering, including Unified Communications as a Service and Contact Center as a Service.

The company plans to integrate Over.ai's technology into its flagship UCaaS offering, Vonage Business Cloud, and its NewVoiceMedia contact center solutions.

“Leveraging [voice AI] capabilities into our solutions will empower Vonage to drive exceptional customer experiences by providing a premier service for every interaction; reducing wait times to zero; and resolving customer issues quickly and effectively using natural language conversation," Javaid said in a statement about the deal.

Vonage last year launched its first channel program—the Vonage Partner Network—for large systems integrators and agent partners.

The company reported its second-quarter 2019 financials Tuesday, reporting consolidated revenue of $298 million, up from $260 million in the year-ago quarter. Business revenue accounted for $200 million of its overall revenue, with business service revenue per customer of $440, a 26 percent increase from the year-ago quarter.