On Wednesday, October 7, 2026, Automation Anywhere announced from San Jose, California, that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Boost.ai, a conversational AI company for large organizations, from its current owner, the fund Nordic Capital. According to the joint release, also published on Boost.ai's website, the transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2026, subject to customary regulatory approvals and closing conditions. The companies did not disclose the price.
Automation Anywhere has been known for more than 20 years for robotic process automation, and lately it presents itself as a leader in “agentic automation and orchestration” for the enterprise. According to its own figures, it has more than 4,000 customers in more than 90 countries, more than 2,700 partners, and it delivers nearly half a billion AI agent and automation executions per year.
Boost.ai, for its part, builds conversational and voice assistants for customer and employee service. It serves hundreds of organizations, with particular strength in Europe and a solid base in regulated industries such as financial services, telecommunications and insurance. Its platform supports more than 36 languages, offers more than 4,000 pre-built conversation topics and maintains security and privacy measures aligned with GDPR and the U.S. HIPAA rules, backed by an independent SOC 2 report.
Technically, Boost.ai combines a patented hybrid natural language understanding (NLU) architecture with generative models and AI agents. The company says it reaches resolution rates above 90% in production deployments. Gartner has recognized it for four consecutive years in its Magic Quadrant for Conversational AI Platforms, citing its strength in regulated industries and the clarity of its product strategy.
The logic of the deal comes down to an idea Automation Anywhere keeps repeating: the Autonomous Enterprise. The company uses that term for an operating model in which business functions can run up to 80% autonomously or with AI assistance. Boost.ai is meant to extend that vision into customer experience, so that a request from a customer or an employee is carried all the way through to execution in the middle and back office.
The deal is Automation Anywhere's second AI acquisition in a year. In late 2025 it bought Aisera, which added enterprise knowledge and automated employee service. With Boost.ai, the company argues it would have the most complete offering on the market across three major areas: customer operations, employee operations and business operations, the latter orchestrated across ERP, CRM and other corporate applications.
“Every enterprise runs on three kinds of work: serving customers, supporting employees, and running the business. Most run in isolation,” said Mihir Shukla, CEO and Chairman of Automation Anywhere. “With Automation Anywhere and Boost.ai, we intend to be the leading offering to give every enterprise an autonomous operation that listens, decides, and acts across all three.” Shukla added that the acquisition will take the company's offering “to the next level.”
Jerry Haywood, CEO of Boost.ai, argued that his company's experience in regulated industries proves that conversational and voice AI can operate at enterprise scale with the reliability, compliance and governance those sectors demand. “By joining Automation Anywhere, we can connect the conversation, including voice, directly to the systems and people who get the work done, so a customer's request is handled from start to finish,” he said.
Ankur Kothari, co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of Automation Anywhere, described the goal as completing what the company calls the “Conversation-to-Outcome Loop.” In his explanation, the customer or employee states what they need, the AI understands the intent and context, reasons within company rules, coordinates agents, people and systems, and finally executes the work across connected applications. People step in when a decision calls for judgment or an exception arises.
The announcement comes with business figures. According to the results for the second quarter of its fiscal year 2027 cited in the release, AI bookings have made up nearly 70% of new and upsell bookings over the past six quarters, and agentic AI executions have grown fivefold over the past year. The company also promises pre-built agentic solutions that can be deployed in as little as one week.
The release also stresses that Boost.ai's voice capabilities have reached a level at which enterprise conversations feel natural, opening uses in sales, customer service, healthcare, outbound calling and field service. Voice is one of the most contested fronts in enterprise AI, because contact centers concentrate large volumes of repetitive interactions and high labor costs.
On the deal, BofA Securities served as exclusive financial advisor to Automation Anywhere and Winston Taylor as its M&A counsel, while Santander served as exclusive financial advisor to Boost.ai. Because closing depends on regulatory approvals, the two companies will continue to operate separately over the coming months.
For customers, the integration raises practical questions: how the Boost.ai and Aisera platforms will coexist, what will happen to European contracts subject to strict data protection requirements, and how long it will take for the promise of complete end-to-end processes to materialize. In sectors such as banking and insurance, traceability of automated decisions and human oversight will remain core requirements.
In conclusion, the Boost.ai purchase confirms a clear trend in enterprise software: automation vendors also want to control the conversational layer, from a customer's first call or message to the task completed in internal systems. If Automation Anywhere manages to integrate both pieces without losing the safeguards that regulated industries require, the “Autonomous Enterprise” will stop being just a slogan and become a concrete offering.
