About $325 million in cash is what Five9 is putting behind conversation AI for contact centers. In a Thursday press release and matching Form 8-K, the San Ramon, Calif., CCaaS company said it signed a definitive agreement to acquire Ujwal, Inc., which does business as Level AI.
Level AI builds agent assist, quality management, Voice of the Customer, and AI Workers on Latitude, its own family of models tuned for customer conversations. Five9 said the startup already handles more than one billion interactions a year for customers that include Gusto, Chime, Empyrean, and VistaPrint. The companies have partnered since 2022, with Level AI apps listed in the Five9 CX Marketplace and wired into the Five9 platform.
Five9 plans two distribution paths. Enterprises that keep on-premises contact centers, or that already run another cloud CCaaS stack, can buy Level AI’s applications as standalone products without first moving to Five9. The same apps will sit in the AI layer of Five9’s Genius CX Platform for the company’s more than 4,000 customers.
“Our vision for the future of CX is one where AI and human agents work as a coordinated system, each making the other better,” Five9 chief executive Amit Mathradas said in the release. “Level AI will also give us a new way to reach enterprises that want AI today but aren’t ready to move their contact center to the cloud.”
Ashish Nagar, Level AI’s founder and chief executive and a former Amazon Alexa product leader, said joining Five9 “brings our CX-native models and AI applications to thousands more contact centers around the world, while we continue to support the organizations that rely on Level AI today.”
Cash deal, no HSR wait
The 8-K pegs aggregate consideration at $325.0 million in cash, subject to customary adjustments for cash, debt, transaction expenses, and working capital at closing. Payment comes from Five9’s balance sheet. Level AI would survive as a wholly owned subsidiary. Five9’s board approved the agreement unanimously. In its Q3 2026 investor presentation, Five9 said the deal is not subject to Hart-Scott-Rodino review and is expected to close in 2026, subject to customary conditions. The merger agreement’s outside date is Feb. 5, 2027.
That deck also puts Level AI at roughly $20 million of standalone annual recurring revenue, growing about 50% year over year, with a similar pace expected over the next 12 months before synergies. Five9 anticipates about one point of adjusted EBITDA margin dilution in 2027, Level AI at EBITDA breakeven in roughly six months, and margin accretion in 2028.
The announcement landed the same day Five9 posted third-quarter results. Guidance in the earnings materials excludes any contribution from Level AI until the deal closes. Centerview Partners advised Five9 on the transaction; Sidley Austin was legal counsel.
Contact-center AI keeps consolidating
Priced tuck-ins of conversation AI into larger CX platforms are piling up. Days earlier, Salesforce agreed to buy Cresta for an undisclosed sum to deepen voice agents inside Service Cloud, while Cresta said it would keep supporting other contact-center stacks. Five9’s twist is the explicit standalone path: sell AI apps to rivals’ installed bases first, then try to pull those accounts onto Genius CX later.
For contact-center buyers still stuck on premises, that packaging matters more than another bundled roadmap slide. Five9 is betting they will pay for Latitude-powered assist and automation now, and revisit the full CCaaS migration when they are ready.
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