2024 was Sonos’s annus horribilis and no mistake: privacy mis-steps; a widely-hated app update; delayed product launches and layoffs.
And since this is 2026, AI is very much at the heart of it.
“Sonos is introducing Sonos 27voice, the company’s own assistant built for music and mood curation, and Sonos 27mcp, which lets you connect any outside AI assistant or agent to your system, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT,” announced the company.
However, Sonos also showed off “custom agents” which will “let people create their own agents through the system, each with its own model, persona and voice”.
The news was accompanied by two new devices that work with all this: the Beam Ultra soundbar and Ace Ultra headphones.
2024 was Sonos’s annus horribilis and no mistake: privacy mis-steps; a widely-hated app update; delayed product launches and layoffs.
Cue a change of CEO with former Pandora exec Tom Conrad taking the reins at the connected-audio company – including some sparky talk earlier this year about a lack of innovation in the music-streaming world.
Now we have an idea of how Conrad is hoping to change that with the unveiling of Sonos 27, billed as “the next generation of its audio operating system”. And since this is 2026, AI is very much at the heart of it.
“Sonos is introducing Sonos 27voice, the company’s own assistant built for music and mood curation, and Sonos 27mcp, which lets you connect any outside AI assistant or agent to your system, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT,” announced the company.
However, Sonos also showed off “custom agents” which will “let people create their own agents through the system, each with its own model, persona and voice”. The news was accompanied by two new devices that work with all this: the Beam Ultra soundbar and Ace Ultra headphones.
