AWS and Vonage Partner to Distribute ‘Natural-Sounding’ AI Voice Agents

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Vonage have partnered to deliver “natural-sounding” artificial intelligence (AI) voice agents for use in customer support and proactive outbound engagement like reminder calls and follow-ups.

This collaboration brings together AWS’ speech-to-speech foundation model Amazon Nova Sonic, which enables “more humanlike voice conversations,” and the Vonage Voice API, which provides flexible voice capabilities on a global carrier network on a per-second basis, the companies said in a Tuesday (July 15) press release.

These AI voice agents can be used in channels that include telephones, WebRTC and mobile apps, according to the release.

The combination of AWS’ and Vonage’s offerings provides a solution that offers responses that are natural and context-aware, development that is seamless and scalability that allows it to be deployed by businesses of any size, per the release.

“By integrating Amazon Nova Sonic with the Vonage Voice API, we’re making it easier for organizations to deploy intelligent voice agents at scale, enhance customer engagement and streamline operations,” Fabio Cerone, managing director, telecommunications at AWS, said in the release.

Christophe Van de Weyer, president and head of business unit API at Vonage, said in the release that the collaboration “enables organizations to transform how they engage with customers by adopting generative AI solutions that create added value for internal and external communications.”

Research firm CB Insights said that voice AI startups raised $2.1 billion in 2024, up eightfold from the previous year. The firm said this growth was driven by advances in voice AI models that gave a big boost to applications in various use cases.

It was reported Friday (July 11) that Meta acquired voice technology/AI startup PlayAI to support the company’s efforts in AI, which is its chief priority.

An internal memo from Meta reportedly said that PlayAI’s “work in creating natural voices, along with a platform for easy voice creation, is a great match for our work and road map.”

In September, Salesforce said it was acquiring AI voice agent developer Tenyx to advance its own AI solutions.

Salesforce said it would use Tenyx’s voice AI expertise to deliver “more intuitive and seamless customer interactions.”