NiCE named Gartner CCaaS leader as AI revenue jumps

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

The recognition comes as NiCE reported continued growth in its artificial intelligence business. AI annual recurring revenue reached USD $362 million in the second quarter, up 52% from a year earlier, and now accounts for 15% of cloud revenue.

NiCE, which sells cloud-based customer service software, linked the ranking to a broader shift in the contact centre market as businesses combine AI tools with human agents in customer support operations. Demand, it said, is moving beyond pilot projects to larger deployments across enterprise operations.

The quarter also marked a record period for AI bookings, driven by NiCE Cognigy, its AI offering for customer service automation.

Several large organisations were cited as users of the technology in live production settings, including Openreach, Toyota, Lufthansa Group and Tripadvisor.

At Openreach, NiCE said AI agents reduced missed appointments and inbound contact volumes by one-third. At Toyota, 95% of customers offered the AI service chose to book directly with an AI agent.

Lufthansa Group uses AI agents to handle more than 16 million customer conversations a year, according to NiCE. Tripadvisor, meanwhile, moved AI voice agents from concept to live calls in 2.5 months.

Market shift

The contact centre software sector has become a focal point for AI investment as companies look to automate more customer interactions while keeping human staff involved in more complex cases. Vendors increasingly describe the next phase of the market as mixed environments in which AI systems and human agents work together on the same platform.

That shift has also changed how suppliers talk about performance, with greater emphasis on business outcomes and handling end-to-end customer requests rather than simple measures such as call volumes or agent activity.

Scott Russell, Chief Executive Officer of NiCE, said the company's experience serving large organisations had shaped its position in the market.

"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, NiCE.

Russell said the company sees customer service moving beyond the traditional contact centre model.

"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.

Enterprise focus

The latest figures suggest NiCE is trying to show that AI adoption in customer service has reached a more commercial stage among large corporate buyers. By highlighting recurring revenue and named deployments, it is pointing to established contracts rather than early trials.

That matters in a market where software groups are under pressure to show AI products can generate sustained revenue rather than experimental spending. Contact centre providers have been competing to demonstrate both technological progress and evidence of use at scale.

NiCE said enterprises now need systems that combine AI agents, human agents, workflows and real-time context in a single operating model. It argued that customer service teams are being asked to manage AI securely and with stronger governance as automated interactions expand.

The latest ranking gives NiCE a prominent position in a competitive CCaaS market, where providers are trying to win larger cloud contracts from global businesses. The company's comments and financial indicators suggest AI performance has become a central measure of that competition, with AI annual recurring revenue of USD $362 million and deployments at Openreach, Toyota, Lufthansa Group and Tripadvisor.