Five9, the Nasdaq-listed maker of cloud contact-center software, has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Level AI, a Mountain View, California, startup that builds AI tools for customer service teams. Five9 announced the deal on November 5, 2026, the same day it reported its third-quarter results.
The agreement values Level AI at about $325 million, which Five9 will pay in cash from its balance sheet. According to Five9's Form 8-K filing, as summarized by FourWeekMBA, the $325.0 million covers Level AI's shares, options and warrants and can be adjusted for cash, debt, transaction expenses and working capital at closing. The legal entity being acquired is Ujwal, Inc., which does business as Level AI.
Five9's board approved the deal unanimously. The company expects it to close in the fourth quarter of 2026, subject to customary conditions. Either side can walk away if it has not closed by February 5, 2027, and neither has to pay a termination fee, FourWeekMBA reported. Five9 plans to sell Level AI's applications both on their own and as part of its own platform.
What Level AI built
Level AI sells software that sits on top of a company's customer conversations. Its platform combines AI agents that talk to customers, agent assist tools for human staff, quality management, Voice of the Customer analysis, coaching and what it calls AI Workers, all built on a shared conversation intelligence layer. Five9 said the platform handles more than one billion customer interactions a year.
The system runs on Level AI Latitude, a family of models the startup developed for customer conversations. Level AI says these models cost less and respond faster than frontier models from the large AI labs, and give enterprises more direct control over data privacy. Its enterprise customers include Gusto, Chime, Empyrean and VistaPrint.
Level AI was founded and is led by Ashish Nagar, a former product leader on Amazon's Alexa team.
“Our vision for the future of CX is one where AI and human agents work as a coordinated system”
Why Five9 is buying
Five9 said the deal will add AI capabilities and a team of experienced AI builders, along with tools for research, analysis and planning that help human agents with complex calls. Chief executive Amit Mathradas said the company's vision is one where AI and human agents work as a coordinated system, and that adding Level AI strengthens Five9's competitive position.
The deal also gives Five9 a way to sell to companies that are not ready to move their contact centers to the cloud. Level AI's applications will be offered as standalone products that do not require Five9's contact-center platform, so enterprises running on-premises systems or rival clouds can buy them. Mathradas said such customers can adopt AI on top of the platform they already use. The same applications will also become part of the AI application layer inside Five9's Genius CX Platform, which Five9 said gives Level AI access to its more than 4,000 customers.
The two companies already know each other. They have worked together since 2022, and Level AI's applications are available in the Five9 CX Marketplace and integrated with Five9's platform.
A large bet for Five9
The price is significant for Five9. FourWeekMBA calculated that $325 million equals about 47% of the $697.7 million in cash and marketable investments Five9 held at the end of September, and is roughly equal to a single quarter's revenue. The figures are the publication's arithmetic, not company numbers.
Five9 reported third-quarter revenue of $323.3 million, up 13% from $285.8 million a year earlier, with subscription revenue up 16%. Its guidance for the year does not include any contribution from Level AI. FourWeekMBA linked the purchase to Five9's own risk disclosure that AI could reduce the number of licenses its customers buy, and read the deal as a push to earn more revenue from AI products.
Centerview Partners is advising Five9 on the transaction, with Sidley Austin as legal counsel.
The founder and the funding
Level AI's backers include Adams Street Partners, Battery Ventures and Eniac Ventures, among others, according to Five9. In August 2024 the startup raised a $39.4 million Series C led by Adams Street Partners, with Cross Creek, Brightloop and several figures from the customer experience industry joining existing investors Battery Ventures and Eniac Ventures, Daily Research News Online reported.
That round nearly doubled the money Level AI had raised to date, the report said, but the companies have not published a total. Five9 did not disclose Level AI's revenue or headcount.
In a statement, Nagar said the company had set out to make every customer conversation improve the next one, and that joining Five9 would bring its models and applications to thousands more contact centers.
