Five9 Buys Level AI for $325 Million to Grow Its Customer Service AI Tools
Five9, a company that makes cloud software for contact centers, has agreed to buy Level AI for about $325 million in cash.
Level AI makes software that listens to customer calls and chats, helps human agents do their jobs, and automates some customer service tasks. The two companies have worked together since 2022, so Level AI's tools already plug into Five9's platform. Five9 says it will pay for the deal using money it already has on hand, and it expects the sale to close by the end of this year.
A contact center is the system a company uses to handle customer calls, chats and messages. Five9 sells this as a cloud service, meaning companies rent it online instead of buying their own equipment. This site explains that kind of news so you do not need a tech dictionary to follow it.
What this means for you
If you run a business, or just want to understand where customer service technology is headed, here is the simple version. Five9 is not only selling its full platform anymore. It now plans to sell Level AI's tools on their own, even to companies that use a rival platform or still run things the old way, without the cloud.
Amit Mathradas, Five9's Chief Executive Officer, said this opens the door to more customers. He said Level AI gives the company "another starting point" to meet a customer's AI needs while their current contact center system stays in place. He added that this standalone AI business is worth having on its own, whether or not those customers ever switch fully to Five9.
Mathradas also said the real goal is not to automate everything possible. He said the winners in customer service will be companies that "automate the right things," not the ones that automate the most.
Here is what is driving the deal, based on what Five9 and outside experts said:
- Five9's own revenue grew 13 percent in the third quarter, reaching $323.3 million, though its profit dipped compared to last year.
- Level AI earned about $20 million in yearly recurring revenue as of October 31, and that revenue grew about 50 percent over the past year.
- Five9 expects Level AI's growth rate to hold steady over the next year, not counting any extra boost from new sales deals.
- The deal is expected to slightly hurt Five9's profit margin in 2027, by about one percentage point, according to Chief Financial Officer Bryan Lee. He said Level AI should break even within about six months and start helping profits more from 2028 onward.
Michael Fauscette, an analyst at Arion Research, told CX Today that selling Level AI as a standalone product lets Five9 get into big companies that are not ready to switch their whole system yet. He said many large businesses want quality checks, agent help and conversation insights now, without a full platform change. He also said the real test will be whether Five9 keeps Level AI trustworthy on other companies' platforms while also folding it into its own system, called Genius CX.
This deal is part of a bigger trend. In 2025, NiCE bought a company called Cognigy for about $955 million to add similar AI tools. More recently, on November 2, Salesforce agreed to buy a voice-focused AI company called Cresta. Big customer service companies are buying smaller AI specialists instead of only building these tools themselves.
Zeus Kerravala, an analyst at ZK Research, says the companies that win in this market will be the ones that offer a full set of tools, covering calls, staffing, quality checks, data and AI, all in one place. He even suggested Five9 itself could become a buying target someday as this race continues.
For now, the big question is whether Five9 can keep Level AI working well with other companies' systems while also tying it closely to its own platform. That balance will decide whether this $325 million bet pays off.
If you want to follow how this story unfolds, keep an eye on Five9's future earnings reports. They will show whether Level AI's standalone sales and customer switch-overs are going as planned.
Source: CX Today
