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Key Takeaways NICE deepens AI leadership with Sopra Steria's CXone and Copilot deployment across three countries.Sopra Steria's CXone setup helps answer 90% of customer calls within 20 seconds. NICE's cloud revenues rose 14.6% in Q1 2026 and made up about 75% of the total revenues. NICE (NICE - Free Report) shares have declined 14% year to date, significantly underperforming the Zacks Computer & Technology sector’s return of 16.6%. The decline reflects investor concerns surrounding a slower enterprise spending environment, longer sales cycles and intensifying competition from Genesys, Five9, Salesforce (CRM - Free Report) and Microsoft (MSFT - Free Report) in the customer experience software market.

However, NICE remains focused on strengthening its enterprise (artificial intelligence) AI platform through continued cloud innovation and strategic customer wins. Sopra Steria, one of Europe’s leading technology consulting firms, has deployed NICE’s CXone and Copilot for Agents across its service centers in France, Poland and India. The deployment marks one of NICE’s first large-scale AI implementations in France and extends its presence across Europe’s growing enterprise AI market.

The cloud-based CXone platform is integrated with Sopra Steria’s IT service management tools, Active Directory and monitoring systems, providing intelligent routing, real-time reporting, interaction traceability and SLA management. The platform consolidates voice, email, chat and digital communications into a single agent interface, enabling Sopra Steria to answer 90% of customer calls within 20 seconds while improving customer experience and operational efficiency.

Sopra Steria's Digital Platform Services division, which manages more than 1.2 million inbound customer interactions annually, is using Copilot for Agents to provide real-time contextual guidance, recommended responses and automated interaction summaries. The deployment supports more than 2,000 employees, including nearly 800 AI-enabled agents and is expected to reduce agent workload, accelerate issue resolution and improve service quality. The deployment further expands NICE's international customer base and is expected to strengthen recurring cloud revenues over the long term.

AI Expansion Strengthens NICE’s ProspectsThe Sopra Steria deployment aligns with NICE’s broader strategy of expanding agentic AI across enterprise customer service operations. In the first quarter of 2026, the company launched CXone Mpower Orchestrator, an AI-powered platform that coordinates AI agents, human employees and business workflows across front, middle and back-office operations. NICE also introduced CXone Mpower Agents, autonomous AI agents that improve productivity by handling customer interactions with minimal human intervention.

NICE’s strong cloud execution and growing AI adoption reinforce its long-term growth prospects. Cloud revenues increased 14.6% year over year in the first quarter of 2026 and represented approximately 75% of the total revenues. Encouraged by this momentum, the company raised its 2026 revenue outlook to $2.92-$2.94 billion. The expanding AI portfolio is expected to strengthen NICE’s competitive position, drive higher cloud adoption and support sustainable recurring revenue growth over the long term.

NICE expects second-quarter 2026 revenues to be $761-$771 million. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for second-quarter 2026 revenues is pegged at $767.17 million, indicating 5.57% year-over-year growth.

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for second-quarter 2026 earnings is pegged at $2.63  per share, which has been unchanged over the past 30 days. The figure implies a year-over-year decline of 12.62%.

NICE Faces Stiff CompetitionNICE faces increasing competition from Microsoft and Salesforce as both companies deepen their presence in AI-powered CX, contact center and enterprise automation markets.

Microsoft competes with NICE through its Dynamics 365 Contact Center, Microsoft Teams, Azure AI and Copilot ecosystem. The company is embedding generative AI, intelligent routing, real-time agent assistance and customer service automation into widely used enterprise productivity applications. Microsoft offers customers an integrated platform that reduces the need for standalone contact center solutions. Its vast enterprise customer base and Azure cloud infrastructure also strengthen its competitive position.

Meanwhile, Salesforce is intensifying competition through Service Cloud, Agentforce, Einstein AI and Data Cloud. The company enables enterprises to deploy autonomous AI agents, automate customer service workflows and unify customer data across sales, marketing and service functions. Salesforce’s broad CRM ecosystem, extensive partner network and deep enterprise relationships make it an attractive end-to-end customer engagement platform, challenging NICE in AI-driven customer experience management.

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NiCE’s CX AI solution supports digital sovereignty and EU data residency requirements

HOBOKEN, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--NiCE (Nasdaq: NICE) today announced it has been named a launch partner for the Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) European Sovereign Cloud, a new independent cloud for Europe. The announcement marks a further expansion of the strategic relationship between NiCE and AWS, with NiCE making its agentic AI-powered customer experience solution available on the AWS European Sovereign Cloud.

Through this collaboration, organizations will be able to deploy NiCE’s advanced AI capabilities while supporting their data residency, operational autonomy, and digital sovereignty requirements within the European Union (EU). Building on the companies’ previously announced partnership to accelerate AI-powered customer service innovation, this newest alliance extends the reach of NiCE’s agentic AI solution to its growing European customer base, particularly organizations operating in highly regulated industries such as public sector, financial services, and healthcare.

The AWS European Sovereign Cloud is a fully featured, independently operated sovereign cloud backed by strong technical controls, sovereign assurances, and legal protections designed to meet the needs of European governments and enterprises. The AWS European Sovereign Cloud infrastructure is entirely located within the EU and operates independently from existing AWS Regions. Customers using the AWS European Sovereign Cloud benefit from the full power of AWS, including the same service portfolio, security, availability, performance, familiar architecture, APIs, and innovations such as the AWS Nitro System. By making NiCE’s agentic AI solution available on the AWS European Sovereign Cloud, organizations in highly regulated industries can accelerate AI adoption and unlock greater business value while maintaining control over sensitive data and meeting digital sovereignty requirements.

Advancing Agentic AI for Regulated Markets
NiCE is a leader in CX AI, unifying AI agents and human agents to orchestrate intelligent, goal-oriented outcomes across the customer journey. With its agentic AI solution planned for availability on AWS European Sovereign Cloud, European organizations will be able to deploy AI agents, real-time copilots, workflow automation, and AI-powered analytics capabilities in an environment designed to meet digital sovereignty needs and support customer requirements.

For example, a European financial institution could deploy NiCE’s AI agents on AWS European Sovereign Cloud to automate routine service requests, support human agents with real-time guidance, and personalize customer interactions while maintaining operational autonomy and keeping customer data within the EU.

“What sets NiCE apart is enterprise-grade agentic AI engineered for the world’s most regulated organizations, purpose-built with reliability, security, compliance, and privacy that organizations can’t compromise on,” said Dorothy Copeland, Chief Partner Officer at NiCE. “By extending our agentic AI solution to the AWS European Sovereign Cloud, NiCE enables Europe’s most regulated organizations to deploy next-generation AI capabilities on an independent cloud infrastructure located within the EU, supporting their digital sovereignty needs while accelerating AI-first customer experience transformation.”

Supporting Europe’s Digital Sovereignty Priorities
Data governance and compliance remain top priorities for organizations operating under EU regulatory frameworks. NiCE’s sovereign cloud strategy, including existing deployments in the EU, U.K., and Australia, reflects its continued commitment to delivering secure, scalable, AI-driven CX solutions that support customers’ regional and regulatory requirements. The addition of the AWS European Sovereign Cloud gives customers an uncompromising choice: achieving total digital sovereignty while continuing to innovate at pace.

"As AI governance becomes a strategic priority across Europe, sovereign cloud environments are evolving from a compliance requirement to a key enabler of innovation. Organizations increasingly need solutions that not only meet stringent data residency and regulatory obligations, but also deliver the agentic AI, automation, and real-time insights required to transform customer experience,” said Oru Mohiuddin, Research Director, IDC. "The combination of NiCE's agentic AI capabilities with the AWS European Sovereign Cloud addresses a growing market need: enabling regulated organizations to pursue AI-led transformation while maintaining control over data, operations, and governance within the EU."

Thomas Pöppe, CIO, AOK Bayern: “As we operate in an increasingly complex regulatory and competitive environment, especially around the use of AI, we see sovereignty as becoming essential to our long-term AI strategy. The combination of NiCE's agentic AI capabilities and the AWS European Sovereign Cloud offers a compelling path forward, allowing us to innovate while meeting evolving requirements around data residency, governance, and operational control.”

About NiCE
NiCE (NASDAQ: NICE) is transforming the world with AI that puts people first. Our purpose-built AI-powered platforms automate engagements into proactive, safe, intelligent actions, empowering individuals and organizations to innovate and act, from interaction to resolution. Trusted by organizations throughout 150+ countries worldwide, NiCE’s platforms are widely adopted across industries connecting people, systems, and workflows to work smarter at scale, elevating performance across the organization, delivering proven measurable outcomes.

Trademark Note: NiCE and the NiCE logo are trademarks of NICE Ltd. All other marks are trademarks of their respective owners. For a full list of NICE's marks, please see: www.nice.com/nice-trademarks.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements as that term is defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements, including the statements by Ms. Copeland, are based on the current beliefs, expectations and assumptions of the management of NICE Ltd. (the “Company”). In some cases, such forward-looking statements can be identified by terms such as “believe,” “expect,” “seek,” “may,” “will,” “intend,” “should,” “project,” “anticipate,” “plan,” “estimate,” or similar words. Forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results or performance of the Company to differ materially from those described herein, including but not limited to the impact of changes in general economic and business conditions; competition; successful execution of the Company’s growth strategy; success and growth of the Company’s cloud Software-as-a-Service business; rapid changes in technology and market requirements; the implementation of AI capabilities in certain products and services, decline in demand for the Company's products; inability to timely develop and introduce new technologies, products and applications; difficulties in making additional acquisitions or difficulties or effectively integrating acquired operations; loss of market share; an inability to maintain certain marketing and distribution arrangements; the Company’s dependency on third-party cloud computing platform providers, hosting facilities and service partners; cyber security attacks or other security incidents; privacy concerns; changes in currency exchange rates and interest rates, the effects of additional tax liabilities resulting from our global operations, the effect of unexpected events or geo-political conditions, including those arising from political instability or armed conflict that may disrupt our business and the global economy; our ability to recruit and retain qualified personnel; the effect of newly enacted or modified laws, regulation or standards on the Company and our products and various other factors and uncertainties discussed in our filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”). For a more detailed description of the risk factors and uncertainties affecting the company, refer to the Company's reports filed from time to time with the SEC, including the Company’s Annual Report on Form 20-F. The forward-looking statements contained in this press release are made as of the date of this press release, and the Company undertakes no obligation to update or revise them, except as required by law.