NiCE leads Gartner with AI revenue hitting USD $362m

NiCE has been named a Leader in Gartner's 2026 Magic Quadrant for Contact Centre as a Service and was placed furthest for Completeness of Vision.

The recognition comes as NiCE reports rising revenue from artificial intelligence products and growing use of its AI agents by large corporate customers.

AI annual recurring revenue reached USD $362 million in the second quarter, up 52% year on year. That now accounts for 15% of cloud revenue, while AI bookings reached a record level in the quarter.

NiCE linked that growth to demand from enterprises seeking to manage AI agents and human staff within the same customer service operation. It argued that customer service is moving beyond the traditional contact centre model as automated systems take on more end-to-end interactions.

The company cited several customers to show how the technology is being used in production.

At Openreach, AI agents cut missed appointments and inbound contact volumes by one-third, according to NiCE. Lufthansa Group is using the system for more than 16 million customer conversations a year, while Toyota said 95% of customers offered the AI service chose to book directly with an AI agent. Tripadvisor moved from concept to live AI voice calls in 2.5 months, NiCE said.

The latest ranking places NiCE among the better-known software providers in the contact centre market, where cloud-based systems have become the standard model for large enterprises. The category covers platforms used to manage customer interactions across voice and digital channels.

AI shift

NiCE said enterprises now need systems that combine automated and human-led service with stronger governance and access to data. That requirement is becoming more important as companies test AI for a broader range of customer tasks rather than limiting it to narrow support functions.

The company also pointed to its NiCE Cognigy product as a driver of recent momentum. It said the current wave of deployments is being led by production use cases at large organisations rather than small-scale pilot projects.

Scott Russell, Chief Executive Officer at NiCE, linked the company's market position to its long experience in customer service software and its focus on AI.

"We got here by running customer service for the world's most demanding enterprises for decades, and by building the AI to match it," said Scott Russell, Chief Executive Officer at NiCE.

Russell also described a broader change in how companies are structuring customer support.

"The contact center was where customer service lived. It is no longer where it ends. What matters now is one platform, where every interaction is handled by the right agent, human or AI, and every enterprise can run customer service as a single, accountable operation," he said.

The figures suggest AI is becoming a more material part of NiCE's cloud business rather than an experimental add-on. With AI annual recurring revenue at USD $362 million and accounting for 15% of cloud revenue, the company is pointing to commercial adoption at a scale that investors and customers can measure.

For buyers in the contact centre software market, Gartner's Magic Quadrant remains a closely watched industry benchmark, particularly among large enterprises reviewing long-term technology contracts. Placement in the Leaders quadrant can influence procurement decisions, though customers typically weigh those rankings alongside pricing, deployment record and integration requirements.

NiCE's customer examples show a wide range of use cases, from appointment management and booking flows to airline customer communications and AI voice systems. That reflects a broader market trend as companies seek to automate repeatable service tasks while keeping human staff for more complex or sensitive interactions.

The update also underlines a shift in how contact centre providers present themselves to the market. Rather than focusing only on queue management and agent productivity, suppliers are increasingly framing their platforms as broader customer service systems that combine workflow, data and automation in one environment.

Against that backdrop, NiCE is using its latest Gartner ranking and revenue figures to argue that it has moved beyond legacy contact centre software into a larger AI-driven customer service market. It said the quarter was an all-time record for AI bookings, with strong momentum driven by NiCE Cognigy.