LivePerson shareholders decide Thursday whether to sell to SoundHound AI, a $3.33-per-share deal backed by ISS and Glass Lewis while SoundHound is still trying to prove its growth can outrun its losses.
The vote is at 10 a.m. Eastern on August 20, 2026, at a special meeting called to approve SoundHound's acquisition of LivePerson. If you own LivePerson shares, this is the moment that decides whether the company stays independent or becomes part of SoundHound's voice and conversational AI business. Proxies were due by 11:59 p.m. Eastern on August 19, and LivePerson has warned shareholders that not voting has the same effect as voting against the transaction.
Institutional Shareholder Services and Glass Lewis both recommended support for the deal, according to LivePerson's August 11 shareholder letter. That matters. These are the proxy firms large index funds and pension managers routinely consult before voting on mergers, so their backing gives LivePerson's board important cover heading into the meeting.
SoundHound first announced the transaction on April 21, offering consideration that represented about $3.33 a share for most LivePerson holders, a 22% premium to LivePerson's 30-day volume-weighted average price before the announcement. Most holders would receive SoundHound stock. Shareholders whose shares trade on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange are expected to receive a substantially equivalent cash payment instead.
The pitch is scale. SoundHound said the combined company would have no debt after closing, count 25 of the Fortune 100 as customers, and aim for at least $350 million to $400 million in 2027 revenue. It also pointed to a $500 million revenue opportunity from the existing customer base alone, built from SoundHound's voice AI business and LivePerson's digital messaging platform, which handles about 1 billion customer messages a month.
Copper Hits Fresh Record Highs as AI Data Centers Push BHP Past Iron Ore BHP's copper business just out-earned its iron ore division for the first time ever, and copper hit fresh record highs on the LME and COMEX this month as AI data center buildouts strain global supply. Aluminum is climbing too, though nickel has yet to break out the same way. - AI data centers driving copper demand surge - copper shortage pushes metal to record prices
The Case For Selling #
LivePerson is not coming to this vote from a position of strength. In a July 23 letter filed with the SEC, the company said its board contacted 66 potential counterparties while reviewing strategic alternatives and decided the SoundHound deal was the best available path for shareholders. That's not a casual line. It tells you the board looked around and did not see a cleaner standalone answer.
The company's own filings explain why. LivePerson said in its first-quarter report that renewals and new bookings had been slower than expected, driven in part by customer uncertainty about its financial stability. Enterprise buyers don't like that kind of noise. When your customers are already stretching buying cycles, doubts about the vendor's balance sheet make every renewal harder.
So the $3.33 figure is not just a takeover premium. It's also a rescue price of sorts, paid in the acquirer's stock for shareholders willing to bet that the combined company has a better shot than LivePerson alone.
SoundHound Still Has To Earn Trust #
SoundHound's latest quarter gave bulls something real to work with. The company reported second-quarter revenue of $61.9 million on August 5, up 45% from a year earlier, and raised its full-year revenue outlook to $230 million to $260 million. GAAP gross margin improved to 45.1%. That's a strong print.
But don't confuse growth with comfort. SoundHound also reported a GAAP net loss of $42.8 million in the same quarter. Its non-GAAP adjusted EBITDA loss was $9.6 million, better than the $14.3 million loss a year earlier, but still a loss. Investors can forgive losses when revenue is moving fast. They get less forgiving when a company adds integration risk at the same time.
There is also legal noise around the transaction, though it should be kept in proportion. Halper Sadeh LLC said in April that it was investigating whether LivePerson and its board obtained the best possible price and ran a fair sales process. That kind of merger investigation follows plenty of public-company deals. It can produce extra disclosures or pressure around price, but by itself it does not mean the transaction is in serious danger.
Wall Street's view is still mostly positive. MarketBeat data recently showed 10 analysts covering SoundHound, with a moderate buy consensus, an average price target of $14.93 and a high target of $20. Zacks, using a seven-target sample on August 12, put the mean target lower at $11.57. Different databases count coverage differently, but the direction is the same: analysts still see upside, while the market is making SoundHound prove the LivePerson deal will not become another expensive AI roll-up story.
Anthropic's Annualized Revenue Rockets to $65 Billion Ahead of Its IPO Anthropic told investors its annualized revenue run rate hit $65 billion in July, up sevenfold from $9 billion at the end of 2025. Enterprise demand and Claude Code drove the surge, pushing Anthropic past OpenAI's roughly $40 billion pace as both companies race toward IPOs. - Anthropic revenue growth rate before IPO - how fast is Anthropic growing financially
Frankly, Thursday's vote is the easy part. The harder test starts after approval, assuming shareholders say yes and regulators clear the deal in the second half of 2026. SoundHound then has to turn LivePerson's enterprise messaging relationships, its own OASYS voice platform, and a no-debt balance sheet into a business that grows without widening losses. That's the bet.
Also read: Baidu's Profit Crashed 68% While Its GPU Cloud Business Surged 283% • Perplexity's downloads crashed 90% in India but its revenue jumped anyway • China lets ByteDance and Tencent import 10,000 Nvidia H200 chips each