Agora, Inc.

Second-quarter 2026 revenue was $40.4 million, up 18% year over year, and above the high end of guidance. Gross profit was $25.7 million, up 12.5% year over year, and gross margin was 63.7% versus 66.8% in the same period last year and 63.4% in Q1 2026. GAAP operating loss was $1.0 million versus a $3.1 million loss a year ago, and GAAP net income was $2.2 million, up 50.3% year over year, with a 5.4% net income margin. For Q3 2026, Agora guided total revenue to $41 million to $42 million, implying 15.8% to 18.6% year-over-year growth.

Tony Zhao framed the quarter as evidence that Agora’s AI strategy is starting to work in practice, especially in call centers where voice AI agents are being used for outbound marketing and surveys. He emphasized that the company is focused on moving conversational AI from pilot to production, while also investing in its SD-RTN infrastructure and developer ecosystem. His tone was confident and strategic, with repeated emphasis on Agora’s positioning at the intersection of real-time engagement, AI, and global infrastructure.

Jingbo Wang highlighted that revenue beat the high end of guidance and that dollar-based net retention improved to 104% from 94% a year ago. He noted gross margin of 63.7%, saying the year-over-year decline was mainly due to product mix as conversational AI usage grew while still remaining subscale, while sequential improvement came from technical optimization. He also pointed to disciplined cost control: R&D was $15.4 million, sales and marketing was $6.4 million, and G&A was $5.5 million. Cash and equivalents, bank deposits, and financial products totaled $361.7 million at quarter-end, and the company repurchased about 1 million ADS for about $3.7 million in Q2, bringing cumulative repurchases to about 44.6 million ADS for about $159.9 million.

Analysts focused on demand trends by geography, the addressable use cases for conversational AI, the conversion cycle from POC to production, and the competitive landscape. Management said RTE demand was stable in China and healthy in the U.S. and international markets, with growth in large shopping, financial services, and gaming, while conversational AI is early and will be a multiyear process. They said the company is still targeting 5% of revenue from conversational AI by the end of 2026, and that the pipeline could support more growth next year. On competition, management said different players attack different layers of the stack, and Agora is focused on voice models, audio processing, low-latency cloud infrastructure, and the agent layer.