SoundHound buys Allset to bring AI voice ordering to more drive-throughs

AI voice company SoundHound has bought food-ordering platform Allset, which positions itself as a full ecosystem for ordering food through cars, TVs and smart devices. 

Allset’s staff, including its founders Stas Mativiyenko and Anna Polischuk, will join the company, the company said in a statement. Allset’s restaurant partnerships will also transfer to SoundHound and will have access to the company’s AI voice products. 

The acquisition comes after other fast food brands are rethinking how to use customer-facing AI. McDonald’s announced it paused a project with IBM that uses AI for automated order-taking in drive-thrus after a series of ordering mishaps documented on social media. The experiment began in 2021. 

SoundHound provides voice recognition and generative AI models to power voice assistants for restaurants, automotive systems and smart home devices. The company worked with the fast food chain White Castle to experiment using AI voices to handle drive-through orders last year. Its other customers include car companies Stellantis, Hyundai, Kia and Honda. It also partnered with AI search platform Perplexity to power SoundHound’s AI assistant. Allset, founded in 2015, gives an alternative to delivery apps.

Expanding voice ordering

SoundHound said bringing in Allset gives it more years of experience in the food space and brings in more technology that lets consumers order food and other goods through natural language. 

“Together, we plan to provide dynamic and convenient ways for people to order food and complete a range of other transactions just by speaking naturally,” said Keyvan Mohajer, co-founder and CEO of SoundHound, in a statement.

Restaurants and fast food chains have been experimenting with generative AI to take customer orders and improve customer service for the past few years. Wendy’s works with Google for its FreshAI platform, which uses AI voice recognition and natural language to understand customer orders in drive-thrus. Before pausing its AI order-taking project, McDonald’s executives said at last year’s VentureBeat Transform that it’s been using AI for foresight and data analytics.