NiCE has signed an agreement to acquire Cognigy, the prominent enterprise conversational and agentic AI provider.
Cognigy was one of the first enterprise technology vendors to launch AI agents in January 2025, making regular new releases ever since.
In doing so, it leverages a strong heritage as an AI leader, with Cognigy at the forefront of the latest Gartner Magic Quadrant and Forrester Wave reports for conversational AI.
As such, NiCE gains an advanced AI portfolio and a highly skilled team that has proven ahead of the curve with AI agents.
Matched with the CXone Mpower Orchestrator, NICE hopes to lead the era of AI-first customer service.
Celebrating the news, Scott Russell, CEO of NiCE, stated:
This is a landmark moment for NiCE, a strategic move that fast-tracks our AI innovation agenda and sets a new standard for customer experience in the AI era.
“By bringing a market leader in enterprise-grade conversational and agentic AI into the fold, we are accelerating global AI adoption, expanding into new global markets, and creating game-changing value for our customers, partners, and shareholders,” he continued.
“Together, we are significantly advancing the future of AI-first customer experience.”
NiCE will have had plenty of options as it scoped conversational AI vendors pivoting to agentic. After all, the market is crowded.
Yet, despite this, Cognigy has surged in recent years, reportedly achieving $37MN in revenues last year, up from $17.5MN in 2025.
In that time, it has completed a $100MN funding round and bolstered a customer base that includes names such as Adidas, Nestle, and Toyota.
Philipp Heltewig, Co-Founder and CEO of Cognigy, believes that, thanks to this acquisition, those customers now have a “massive opportunity” to lead the future of CX.
“NiCE is an exceptional organization whose global reach, deep expertise, and relentless focus on innovation will accelerate our growth and enhance the value we bring to our customers and partners,” he continued.
Together, we are uniquely positioned to shape the future of customer experience, uniting the best of trusted AI and human interactions.
Interestingly, over the past 18 months, Cognigy has signed massive partnerships with Avaya and Genesys, helping lots of their on-premise contact center customers overlay cloud-based AI innovation.
In many cases, it’s serving these businesses with the virtual agent software on their websites and voice automation across their telephony channels.
By snapping up the AI provider, NiCE wriggles its way into those contact centers.
As such, many of these brands may consider NiCE more closely when they migrate to CCaaS.
After all, Cognigy has a reputation for high customer satisfaction, as evident by its 4.8 and 4.6 out of five ratings on the respective verified customer review sites Gartner Peer Insights and G2.
Given this, businesses may transfer that brand trust from Cognigy to NiCE, especially if the latter maintains the high-performance culture Cognigy has cultivated.
As such, this acquisition may have significant implications beyond the convergence of CCaaS and agentic AI.
Nevertheless, that convergence is exciting, especially given NiCE’s recent move to release CXone Mpower Agents, and how the acquisition may accelerate its ambitions to fulfill end-to-end customer workflows.
The Industry Reacts
Given the scale of the news, CX Today reached out to prominent industry analysts, consultants, and thought leaders across the contact center and conversational AI spaces to gather their perspectives on the news. Here’s what they had to say.
NiCE Is Flexing Its Financial Muscle
“[The acquisition is] not surprising. Conversational AI is the one area in which everyone sees business value in AI. It’s a great tuck-in acquisition.
“Unlike its competitors, NICE has an enviable cash position that will allow it to bolster its AI offerings while taking out competition.”
- Maribel Lopez, Founder & Principal Analyst at Lopez Research
A Move That Will Be a Catalyst for Industry Consolidation
“This is a significant move and an example of the rich getting richer. The leading AI-CC company scoops up the leader in conversational AI, A case where 1+1 could equal 10.
“Also, many of NICE’s competitors use Cognigy, and they’ll have to scramble now to find an alternative. This could cause a wave of M&A (merger and acquisition) activity in this market.”
- Zeus Kerravala, Principal Analyst at ZK Research
NiCE Gains Full Control Over the Service Orchestration Layer
“This acquisition signals that the CX market is shifting toward fully integrated, AI-native platforms. As CX stacks become more difficult to manage, many organizations will move away from best-of-breed solutions in favour of comprehensive platforms that are easier to deploy, manage, and scale. By bringing Cognigy in-house, NiCE reduces its reliance on external partners and gains full control over the orchestration layer, a key move as automation becomes central to the customer journey.
“For customers, this means tighter integration, faster rollout of AI, and fewer headaches across procurement, integration, and implementation. For partners and systems integrators, it’s an indicator that they need to revisit their current business models. While there’s still value in customisation, revenue streams tied to integrating multiple vendors will start to shrink. NiCE’s move also highlights a growing divide in the market between platforms that own their AI and orchestration layers and those that still depend on third-party tools.
“Also, this acquisition aligns with NiCE’s broader strategy of entering adjacent markets to fuel growth. We’ve already seen this with their unified communications effort through 1CX, which seeks to unify contact center and employee collaboration on a single platform.”
- Tim Banting, Head of Research & Business Intelligence at Techtelligence
“A Clever, Competitive Play That Reshapes the CX AI Landscape”
“With this acquisition, NiCE secures one of the most advanced autonomous AI agent providers in the market. Cognigy brings the structured intelligence needed to automate complex CX workflows at scale. This isn’t about generative hype; it’s a foundational move to control a service others relied on as neutral ground. It’s a clever, competitive play that reshapes the CX AI landscape.”
- Finbarr Begley, Senior Analyst for CX and Enterprise at Cavell
NiCE Strengthens Its European Footing
“This feels like a match made in heaven. NiCE has pioneered AI in CX, and Cognigy has made impressive strides in agentic AI. Together, they can be expected to set new standards. And, with Cognigy being in Germany, it provides NiCE with a stronger European footing.”
- Oru Mohiuddin, Senior Research Manager, Enterprise Communications & Collaboration at IDC
This is a breaking news story. More reactions will come soon.
