companies

Cerence Inc.

Nasdaq-listed company whose voice assistant and generative-AI platform powers in-car experiences for Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Honda, BYD and dozens more automakers.

Cerence was spun out of Nuance Communications' automotive division in October 2019 and began trading on the Nasdaq the same month, inheriting decades of speech-recognition work that already sat inside millions of cars under brand names like Mercedes-Benz's "Hey Mercedes" and Honda's in-car assistant. The company is headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts, employs roughly 1,300 people worldwide, with the large majority based outside the US, and appointed former Intel CEO Brian Krzanich as its own CEO in October 2024. Cerence licenses its assistant technology to OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers rather than selling directly to drivers, and it has been pushing that licensing model toward generative AI with CaLLM, its family of automotive-tuned large and small language models, and Cerence xUI, a hybrid platform meant to turn a reactive voice assistant into a more proactive one. Recent deals extend the CaLLM/xUI stack to BYD and Geely, and a partnership with Microsoft brings 365 Copilot access into supported vehicles, running on both NVIDIA AI Enterprise and Microsoft Azure infrastructure.

Founded

2019

Headquarters

Burlington, United States

Sector

applications