SoundHound AI, Inc., a global leader in voice artificial intelligence, announced the acquisition of key assets from Allset, an online ordering platform that connects restaurants and local customers. As part of the acquisition, Allset’s team will be joining SoundHound, further strengthening the company’s capabilities and commitment to innovation.
The closing of the acquisition will bring additional restaurant relationships, engineering skills, and marketplace know-how to SoundHound AI as it builds towards its vision of a voice commerce ecosystem that enables consumers to access goods and services through natural conversation. This includes plans to facilitate voice-enabled food and drink ordering across millions of cars, TVs, and smart devices.
Founded in 2015, Allset is a food ordering platform designed for local pick-up, providing a seamless, cost-effective dining experience that allows both consumers and restaurants to bypass the high fees charged by delivery apps. The business received backing from investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, and has amassed nearly 7,000 restaurant partners nationwide, including Joe & The Juice and Charleys Cheesesteaks.
Alongside continuing the services provided by Allset, all of the platform’s current restaurant partners – as well as all new signups to Allset – will now have full access to a suite of SoundHound’s voice AI products to improve operational efficiency, reduce costs, and drive sales.
The Allset leadership team, including Co-Founders Stas Matviyenko and Anna Polishchuk, will also apply their extensive marketplace experience to accelerating SoundHound’s first-of-its-kind voice monetization platform. The move mobilizes a key part of the company’s growth strategy, enabling consumers to use conversational voice AI to effortlessly order food from their vehicles or a voice-enabled device, like a TV.
Today, SoundHound is a market leader for restaurant voice AI solutions, working with over 10,000 restaurant locations. The company’s fast, accurate voice ordering technology can be deployed across multiple channels, including via phone, drive-thru, kiosk, and mobile app. The system can seamlessly pick-up customer orders, understand speech in a range of major languages, learn any restaurant’s menu, process orders directly to the POS, answer customer FAQs, and even upsell add-ons and offer special promotions.
SoundHound also works with world class clients across a range of other sectors, including smart devices, TVs, and automotive – where SoundHound’s solutions are in millions of units around the world today.
“As a business, Allset will help SoundHound bring voice AI solutions to even more restaurants looking to improve operational efficiency. At the same time, the Allset team brings a wealth of marketplace experience and knowledge that will make our bigger vision of a voice commerce ecosystem a reality,” said Keyvan Mohajer, CEO and Co-Founder of SoundHound AI. “Together, we plan to provide dynamic and convenient ways for people to order food and complete a range of other transactions just by speaking naturally.”
“We are thrilled to join forces with SoundHound to combine our established partnerships and marketplace expertise with SoundHound’s class-leading voice AI solutions and capabilities,” said Stas Matviyenko, CEO and Co-Founder of Allset. “From the beginning, we realized that we share the same vision for the voice commerce ecosystem that elevates the consumer experience. This team-up will accelerate our progress toward the next exciting phase of AI-powered ordering convenience.”
SOURCE: Businesswire