California-based SoundHound, one of the largest providers of artificial intelligence-based voice recognition, announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire SYNC3 Restaurant Solutions, another provider of voice AI.
SoundHound says this deal will make it “the preeminent U.S. provider of voice AI for restaurants,” significantly extending its market reach by an order of magnitude to over 10,000 signed locations and accelerating the deployment of leading-edge generative AI capabilities to the industry.
SYNQ3 will add large brands spanning drive-thru, fast-casual, casual segments, and convenience stores to SoundHound’s fast growing customer base—bringing the total to more than 25 national and multinational chains.
The “highly complementary” businesses will match decades of combined experience with established relationships across the industry.
The SYNQ3 team brings restaurant sales, product, and customer service experience with an increasing focus on AI. Executive talent like CEO and co-founder Steve Bigari, a former McDonald’s operator, will strengthen SoundHound AI’s leadership as the company moves to rapidly roll out its AI solutions to restaurants across the U.S. and beyond.
Other benefits include a claim of more than 100,000 restaurant locations in its combined pipeline, with more than 10,000 partnerships signed. In addition, SoundHound pointed to revenue synergies with existing restaurant customers, expanded AI models using data from more than 50 million interactions and omnichannel voice AI offerings that allow restaurants to use the technology across multiple touchpoints.
The company also said this deal will accelerate its monetization strategy for voice-enabled food and drink ordering in cars, TVs and IoT devices.
“In joining forces, SoundHound AI and SYNQ3 will be the go-to standard for cutting-edge voice and conversational AI solutions for the restaurant industry,” said Keyvan Mohajer, CEO and co-founder of SoundHound AI. “Restaurant operators are turning to technology en masse, and voice AI is now playing a key role in helping them drive sales, reduce costs, and alleviate the burden of increasing demand on their employees.”
“SoundHound AI and SYNQ3 will provide our restaurant partners with a formidable voice solution that we believe significantly surpasses the competition,” said Bigari. “Our businesses are highly complementary, with both AI and industry expertise at the core of who we are. Together, we plan to capitalize on those synergies to provide best-in-class AI ordering methodologies backed by the largest library of restaurant AI orders in the world. This will power a rapid acceleration of our growth.”
