"We are pleased to report another quarter of accelerating growth and our sixth consecutive quarter of GAAP profitability," said Tony Zhao, Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Agora, Inc. "During the quarter, we enhanced our conversational AI portfolio with the launch of Agent Studio, a no-code platform that enables customers to rapidly build, deploy, and scale voice AI agents, alongside purpose-built agent templates for customer service and outbound marketing. We are seeing robust customer adoption and sustained growth in platform usage. As the market shifts from pilot programs to full-scale production, our decade-long investment in real-time engagement infrastructure positions us as a trusted provider of reliable, high-performance solutions. We remain committed to enabling our customers to deploy conversational AI at scale with ease and confidence."
First Quarter 2026 Highlights
Total revenues for the quarter were $37.7 million, an increase of 13.5% from $33.3 million in the first quarter of 2025.
Active Customers as of March 31, 2026 were 3,946, an increase of 3.8% from 3,800 as of March 31, 2025.
Dollar-Based Net Retention Rate for the quarter was 99%, compared to 95% in the first quarter of 2025.
Net income for the quarter was $1.1 million, compared to $0.4 million in the first quarter of 2025.
Total cash, cash equivalents, bank deposits and financial products issued by banks as of March 31, 2026 was $366.1 million.
Net cash provided by operating activities for the quarter was $5.7 million (including interest received of $4.6 million), compared to $17.6 million in the first quarter of 2025 (including interest received of $17.8 million).
First Quarter 2026 Financial Results
RevenuesTotal revenues were $37.7 million in the first quarter of 2026, an increase of 13.5% from $33.3 million in the same period last year, primarily due to the expansion and usage growth of our real-time engagement service in sectors such as live shopping, social and entertainment, and financial service.
Cost of RevenuesCost of revenues was $13.8 million in the first quarter of 2026, an increase of 29.9% from $10.6 million in the same period last year, primarily due to increases in bandwidth and server costs and costs related to conversational AI products.
Gross Profit and Gross MarginGross profit was $23.9 million in the first quarter of 2026, an increase of 5.7% from $22.6 million in the same period last year. Gross margin was 63.4% in the first quarter of 2026, a decrease of 4.6% from 68.0% in the same period last year, mainly due to product mix changes, including conversational AI products remaining at a sub-scale stage.
Operating ExpensesOperating expenses were $26.4 million in the first quarter of 2026, a decrease of 0.4% from $26.5 million in the same period last year.
Research and development expenses were $14.4 million in the first quarter of 2026, an increase of 2.9% from $14.0 million in the same period last year, primarily due to increased investment in conversational AI products.
Sales and marketing expenses were $5.9 million in the first quarter of 2026, a decrease of 4.8% from $6.2 million in the same period last year, primarily due to disciplined expense management, including lower personnel and promotion expenses.
General and administrative expenses were $6.0 million in the first quarter of 2026, a decrease of 3.4% from $6.2 million in the same period last year, primarily due to a decrease in allowance for current expected credit losses, mainly as a result of improved customer credit conditions and collection outcomes.
Loss from OperationsLoss from operations was $1.6 million in the first quarter of 2026, compared to $3.7 million in the same period last year.
Interest IncomeInterest income was $3.4 million in the first quarter of 2026, compared to $3.6 million in the same period last year, primarily due to the decrease in the average principal amount.
Investment (Loss) IncomeInvestment loss was $0.9 million in the first quarter of 2026, compared to investment income of $0.7 million in the same period last year, primarily due to fair value changes in equity investments.
Net Income per American Depositary Share Attributable to Ordinary ShareholdersBasic and diluted net income per American Depositary Share ("ADS")1 attributable to ordinary shareholders was $0.01 in the first quarter of 2026, compared to $0.004 in the same period last year.
Share Repurchase Program
During the three months ended March 31, 2026, the Company repurchased approximately 12.5 million of its Class A ordinary shares (equivalent to approximately 3.1 million ADSs) for approximately US$13.1 million under its share repurchase program, representing 6.5% of its US$200 million share repurchase program.
As of March 31, 2026, the Company had repurchased approximately 174.7 million of its Class A ordinary shares (equivalent to approximately 43.7 million ADSs) for approximately US$156.2 million under its share repurchase program, representing 78.1% of its US$200 million share repurchase program.
As of March 31, 2026, the Company had 338.2 million ordinary shares (equivalent to approximately 84.5 million ADSs) outstanding, compared to 449.8 million ordinary shares (equivalent to approximately 112.5 million ADSs) outstanding as of January 31, 2022 before the share repurchase program commenced.
The current share repurchase program will expire at the end of February 2027.
Financial Outlook
Based on currently available information, the Company expects total revenues for the second quarter of 2026 to be between $39.0 million and $40.0 million, representing year-over-year growth of 13.7% to 16.6%. This outlook reflects the Company's current and preliminary views on the market and operational conditions, which are subject to change.
Earnings Call
The Company will host a conference call to discuss the financial results at 6 p.m. Pacific Time / 9 p.m. Eastern Time on May 26, 2026. Details for the conference call are as follows:Event title: Agora, Inc. 1Q 2026 Financial ResultsThe call will be available at https://edge.media-server.com/mmc/p/vbsrxuhvInvestors who want to hear the call should log on at least 15 minutes prior to the broadcast. Participants may register for the call with the link below.https://register-conf.media-server.com/register/BIdac26bffc0104a0da1dfcd94c16d1908Please visit the Company's investor relations website at https://investor.agora.io on May 26, 2026 to view the earnings release and accompanying slides prior to the conference call.
Operating Metrics
The Company also uses other operating metrics included in this press release and defined below to assess the performance of its business.
Active Customers
An active customer at the end of any period is defined as an organization or individual developer from which the Company generated more than $100 of revenue during the preceding 12 months, excluding customers from Easemob. Customers are counted based on unique customer account identifiers. Generally, one software application uses the same customer account identifier throughout its life cycle while one account may be used for multiple applications.
Dollar-Based Net Retention Rate
Dollar-Based Net Retention Rate is calculated by comparing the quarterly revenue from paying customers, excluding revenue from certain end-of-sale products, in the quarter four quarters prior to the most recent quarter to the quarterly revenue from the same set of customers in the most recent quarter. The Company believes Dollar-Based Net Retention Rate facilitates operating performance comparisons on a period-to-period basis.
Safe Harbor Statements
This press release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, and the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All statements other than statements of historical or current fact included in this press release are forward-looking statements, including but not limited to statements regarding the Company's financial outlook, beliefs, and expectations. Forward-looking statements include statements containing words such as "expect," "anticipate," "believe," "project," "will," and similar expressions intended to identify forward-looking statements. Among other things, the Financial Outlook in this announcement contains forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are based on the Company's current expectations and involve risks and uncertainties. The Company's actual results and the timing of events could differ materially from those anticipated in such forward-looking statements as a result of these risks and uncertainties, which include, without limitation, risks related to the growth of the RTE-PaaS market; the Company's ability to manage its growth and expand its operations; the Company's ability to attract new developers and convert them into customers; the Company's ability to retain existing customers and expand their usage of its platform and products; the Company's ability to drive popularity of existing use cases and enable new use cases, including through quality enhancements and introduction of new products, features, and functionalities; the Company's fluctuating operating results; competition; the effect of broader technological and market trends on the Company's business and prospects; general economic conditions and their impact on customer and end-user demand; and other risks and uncertainties included elsewhere in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"), including, without limitation, the Company's annual report on Form 20-F for the year ended December 31, 2025 and other filings with the SEC. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this press release. All forward-looking statements are qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement, and the Company undertakes no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date hereof.
About Agora, Inc.
Agora, Inc. is the holding company of two independent divisions, under the Agora brand and the Shengwang brand, respectively.
Headquartered in Santa Clara, California, Agora is a pioneer and global leader in conversational AI and Real-Time Engagement Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), providing developers with simple, flexible, and powerful application programming interfaces, or APIs, to embed real-time conversational AI, video, voice, chat, and interactive streaming into their applications.
Headquartered in Shanghai, China, Shengwang is a pioneer and leading conversational AI and Real-Time Engagement PaaS provider in the China market.
For more information on Agora, please visit: www.agora.ioFor more information on Shengwang, please visit: www.shengwang.cn
Agora, Inc.
Consolidated Balance Sheets
(Unaudited, in US$ thousands)
As of
As of
March 31,
December 31,
2026
2025
Assets
Current assets:
Cash and cash equivalents
105,068
75,446
Short-term bank deposits
179,036
84,460
Short-term financial products issued by banks
52,000
55,000
Short-term investments
3,585
4,583
Restricted cash
200
200
Accounts receivable, net
24,895
24,867
Prepayments and other current assets
18,290
14,590
Contract assets
125
123
Held-for-sale assets
831
831
Total current assets
384,030
260,100
Property and equipment, net
3,699
3,947
Construction in progress in relation to the headquarters project
96,845
84,239
Operating lease right-of-use assets
1,855
2,145
Intangible assets
17
96
Long-term bank deposits
30,000
160,001
Long-term investments
29,239
29,182
Land use right, net
163,265
161,591
Other non-current assets
15,232
19,798
Total assets
724,182
721,099
Liabilities and shareholders' equity
Current liabilities:
Accounts payable
10,824
9,638
