November 4, 2026 • 5 min read
Dialpad to Merge with Ada, Deliver More Intelligent AI Agents
Director of Content & Market Research
November 4, 2026
Dialpad and Ada are joining forces to support smarter AI agents, delivered on what they call an “agentic operating system for customer work.”
The deal marks the latest in a growing wave of customer experience platform stalwarts coming together with conversational AI specialists.
For instance, NiCE acquired Cognigy in late 2025, while Salesforce snapped up Fin AI and, most recently, Cresta.
Like the NiCE-Cognigy example, one motiviation is to take Dialpad’s contact center intelligence and guide Ada’s AI agents to complete “customer work”.
The move also aims to inspire better collaboration between human and AI agents.
As Craig Walker, Co-Founder and CEO of Dialpad, told CX Foundation: “The best customer experiences happen when someone understands your situation and takes responsibility for helping you.”
“With Ada, we’re building a platform where AI can take action and bring in the right person when judgment matters, with the context they need to keep moving.”
However, while other providers may make similar promises, a closer look at how these companies' portfolios and roadmaps could collide shows this acquisition has significant potential.
The Potential in This Merger
Dialpad will likely leverage its contact center intelligence to automatically develop Ada AI agents that resolve recurring customer intents, complete with accompanying ROI projections. That is what NiCE has done with Cognigy.
However, consider Dialpad’s roadmap, and it might just take this concept further.
Indeed, Dialpad has invested significantly in real-time intelligence. As a result, it may soon auto-update AI agents, based on current intelligence, to resolve contact center issues as they arise.
Consider an issue with the company app. Dialpad could detect the problem as it unfolds, learn how human agents are resolving it in real time, and automatically develop an AI agent to help absorb the resulting spike in customer demand.
That’s already on Dialpad’s roadmap. Ada’s AI will accelerate that capability.
Yet, that’s not all. A closer look at this acquisition reveals three additional, exciting possibilities:
1. AI Agents That Act Like Subject Matter Experts
Dialpad isn’t just a contact center vendor. It also offers unified communications on the same platform. This architecture lets contact centers send specific queries to subject matter experts (SMEs) across the enterprise, not just formal service reps.
As they do so, these organizations can capture how SMEs resolve queries, add that to its intelligence pool, and increase the scope for customer contact automation with Ada.
2. AI Agents That Change the Contact Center Role
As noted, Dialpad offers CCaaS and UCaaS on one platform. That allows Ada’s agents to escalate contacts not only to contact center agents but also to SMEs.
Yet, those agents won’t just escalate. Soon, they may route specific tasks to employees, who complete them in the background while the AI continues leading the conversation.
As a result, the human almost acts as a sub-agent in an agentic workflow, fulfilling tasks AI agents don’t have the permission to complete. Again, this increases the scope for automation and fundamentally changes the human service rep role.
Walker hints that this is what’s coming.
“AI agents and people will work together, passing the conversation back and forth naturally, so customers don’t have to repeat themselves or start over.”
3. One Workforce Management Platform for Human and AI Agents
Dialpad has an underrated workforce management (WFM) solution. Its vision for this is to build a workforce orchestration layer that manages a hybrid team of human and AI agents.
The vendor’s solution already incorporates AI escalations into forecasting and staffing while supporting new types of human agent work, like AI annotation and training.
Yet, this next step is one to watch, as it’s likely to pull AI agents onto the platform.
While many CCaaS providers have announced one quality assurance (QA) solution for hybrid teams, only NiCE and Cisco have openly discussed hybrid WFM.
Soon, Dialpad will join that conversation.
The State of the Conversational AI Market
Several of Ada’s conversational AI rivals have recently been acquired. In addition to Cognigy, Cresta, and Fin.AI, Boost.ai, Interactions, and LivePerson have also been snapped up.
Such consolidation doesn’t seem like a coincidence. Enterprises are moving quickly to layer conversational AI over their CX stack, automate conversations, and draw value from AI.
However, while conversational AI can deliver fast results, the underlying architecture ultimately sets a ceiling on its success.
Given this, many platform providers that run the underlying solutions see value in investing in that conversational AI layer and building relationships with brands.
As they do so, these providers start to connect automation, data, and customer support workflows, shaping the customer’s CX strategy - even if a rival vendor still holds a contract for the core CX infrastructure.
Therefore, it’s no surprise more conversational AI providers are being rolled up, while many other contact center providers spin out their homegrown solutions as standalone offerings, like Microsoft, Talkdesk, and Zoom.
However, in fairness to Dialpad, this isn’t just following a trend. With its broad portfolio, real-time intelligence, and workforce orchestration, it can bring real differentiation.
More Details on Dialpad & Ada Merger
The Dialpad-Ada merger was first reported by The Globe and Mail on Wednesday, November 4.
According to the publication, the deal values Ada at US$430 million, suggesting this is effectively an acquisition but is legally structured as a merger.
In an online post, Mike Murchison, Co-Founder & CEO of Ada, stated the deal would help it accelerate innovation and deliver more value to its existing customer base.
“You're going to be getting more value from us ahead, and we have many exciting announcements that are coming around the corner.
At the same time, framing this as a merger allows Dialpad and Ada to emphasize the benefits of the two companies acting as one.
If that company can deliver AI agents that leverage real-time intelligence, act like SMEs, and interact with human employees in new ways, those benefits could be significant.