The Speak, Orchestrate and Use layers led the week, with 2 filings each.
Same-week Agents 1.5.5–1.5.6 hear ships collapse to one card; diarization and new STT providers stay on one hear row.
livekit-agents 1.5.6 adds Inworld STT and SmallestAI Pulse STT with realtime streaming and batch transcription; the same ISO-week hear cluster folds 1.5.5 inference STT diarization with speaker_id and Deepgram flux-general-multi.
livekit-agents 1.5.6 (cluster with 1.5.5)
Moves Soniox from STT-only into a priced STT+TTS stack at $0.70/generated-hour — first TTS SKU; v2 with audio tags follows in August.
Soniox launched a Text-to-Speech API for high-fidelity speech in 60+ languages with streaming generation, alphanumeric precision, mixed-language handling, and regional deployment in the US, EU, and Japan, priced at $0.70 per hour of generated speech.
Soniox Text-to-Speech
Same-week Agents 1.5.5–1.5.6 speak ships collapse to one card covering xAI, Qwen 3, and Minimax TTS.
livekit-agents 1.5.6 adds Qwen 3 TTS on Simplismart and new Minimax TTS models; the same ISO-week speak cluster folds 1.5.5 xAI TTS on the inference path.
livekit-agents 1.5.6 (cluster with 1.5.5)
Shared avatar session abstraction.
livekit-agents 1.5.5 adds an AvatarSession base class and warns on sync mis-wire for remote avatars.
livekit-agents 1.5.5
Flagship S2S API with Starlink production metrics (20% sales conversion, 70% support containment, 28 tools) — τ-voice top spot and those rates are xAI-published.
xAI released grok-voice-think-fast-1.0, a full-duplex speech-to-speech voice agent API model aimed at multi-step support and sales workflows, with background reasoning, structured data capture, 25+ languages, and claimed top placement on the τ-voice Bench.
Grok Voice Think Fast 1.0
Healthcare no-code voice-agent builder with ARC compliance switching and vendor-claimed 40%/90% accuracy/speed gains — figures are Infinitus-stated.
Also UseThink
Infinitus launched Studio, a healthcare-specific no-code builder for designing, simulating, and deploying voice AI agents with Agent Response Control guardrails for payors and pharmaceutical programmes.
Infinitus Studio
Dated omnichannel M&A for a platform already in the corpus on OASYS — voice plus digital messaging under one roof, still pending H2 2026 close.
Also Connect
SoundHound AI and LivePerson announced a definitive agreement for SoundHound to acquire LivePerson, combining SoundHound's voice and agentic AI with LivePerson's digital messaging platform.
LivePerson acquisition
Consumer TTS brand opens a B2B voice-agent SKU with a 1,000,000-minute early-access pool — early access, not GA, and the 50M-user figure is vendor-claimed.
Also Think
Speechify opened an early access programme for Simba Voice Agents, a business voice-agent brand built on the company's TTS, STT, diarization, and speech-to-speech stack, offering selected partners 1,000,000 minutes plus Forward Deployed Engineer support.
Simba Voice Agents
SI-packaged Gemini Enterprise contact-centre SKU for retail on 22 April — unnamed operators, so Cognizant stays the company rather than inventing a client.
Also ConnectOrchestrate
Cognizant launched Agentic Retail CX, a contact-centre solution on Google Cloud Gemini Enterprise for CX that targets retail self-service containment, omnichannel engagement, and agent-assisted workflows.
Agentic Retail CX · vendor Google Cloud