Sonos 27 opens home audio to ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude

Sonos rolled out a new software platform called Sonos 27, described as an operating system for home audio, alongside a $449 Ace Ultra headphone and $699 Beam Ultra soundbar, both available for pre-order today and shipping September 29, according to Engadget's live coverage. The centerpiece for AI watchers is Sonos27mcp, an open interface entering open access on September 8 that lets third-party agents including ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini discover and control Sonos systems.

"Every other company sees something to lock out, we see an opportunity for choice," CEO Tom Conrad said during the presentation. In a demo, ChatGPT surfaced trending music on TikTok and pushed it to a grouped set of speakers.

The software also previews Custom Agents, a technology preview showing multiple assistants with distinct personalities, each powered by a different LLM. Sonos named Google Gemini and Anthropic Claude as the models behind them, and showed a "Kitchen Helper," a music "Curator" and a "Trivia Champion" onstage. Full launch is planned for 2026.

On hardware, Ace Ultra ships with a ten-microphone array Sonos says delivers twice the noise-cancelling of the original Ace, plus 35-hour battery life. Beam Ultra jumps to 7.1.2 Dolby Atmos with upward-firing drivers. A separate Portable Surrounds feature lets Portable Play speakers become wireless surrounds automatically when moved into rooms, using accelerometers and ultra-high frequency detection.

Sonos claims 50 million devices across 17 million homes globally. It is a rare consumer-hardware bet on MCP as the connective tissue between household devices and the dominant AI assistants, one of 95 assistant stories we have tracked in the last 90 days, rather than a proprietary voice stack.