AUSTIN, Texas, April 10, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Less than one year since being acquired by IgniteTech, Khoros today announced Aurora AI, an AI-native reimagining of the Khoros Community platform. Aurora AI is not an upgrade. It is a new platform that uses AI to handle support, product feedback and keep customer communities active without manual moderation. Aurora AI is built to turn customer communities into the most valuable business asset an enterprise owns.

Khoros communities have powered over 4,000 customer deployments since 2001, generating 1.8 billion site visits per year and saving brands more than $500 million annually in support costs through self-service. Aurora AI takes that foundation and rebuilds it with AI woven into every layer, so that peer knowledge becomes cited answers, member engagement drives retention and every interaction compounds into measurable outcomes.

The biggest problem Aurora AI solves: answering the 30% of questions posted in online communities that have previously gone unanswered. For the brands that depend on those communities for customer support, product feedback and peer-to-peer engagement, every unanswered question is a lost customer, a missed insight or a support ticket that didn't need to exist. Aurora AI eliminates that gap.

"As a company that has fully transformed into an AI-DNA company, we didn't bolt AI onto legacy software," said Eric Vaughan, CEO of IgniteTech and Khoros. "We rebuilt Khoros' products from the inside out. Twenty years of customer conversations, community knowledge and social interactions across Fortune 500 brands. Billions of data points that were unstructured, untapped and waiting for AI to unlock them. Aurora AI is what happens when you stop treating that data as an archive and start treating it as an intelligence layer."

Not a Forum with AI Bolted On

Aurora AI is built on three integrated layers that reinforce each other and grow smarter every day.

The Human Engine powers gamification, reputation and recognition systems that turn passive members into active contributors. Badges, leaderboards, expert tiers and member journey automation generate the human signal that makes everything else work.

The Intelligence Layer runs three live AI systems trained on each community's own data. The Community Language Model (CLM) learns the specific vocabulary and conventions of each community. Answer Assist monitors unanswered posts and generates grounded, cited responses. AI Moderation enforces guidelines in real time with a three-tier trust architecture. All intelligence stays with the customer, not Khoros.

The Action Layer is powered by Orchestrator, a rules-based automation engine that handles routing, escalation, lifecycle management and workflow automation without writing code. It runs deterministically with zero hallucinations and a full audit trail.

"Orchestrator means a team of two can run programs that used to require a team of ten," said Vaughan. "And it's not just about efficiency. It's about doing things you literally could not do before because manual effort made them impossible."

AI Agents That Power the Aurora AI Experience

Aurora AI launches with three AI agents in beta: Answer Assist, AI Moderation and Orchestrator. The roadmap includes Recommendation Engine and Content Discovery in Q2 2026, Member Growth Agents in Q3 2026 and AI Brand Watch and Correction plus AI Data Analyst in Q4 2026.

Every AI agent is grounded and auditable. Every answer cites a source. Every decision has an audit trail. Enterprise compliance is built in.

Two Forces. One Chorus.

Aurora AI does not exist in isolation. It is one half of a complete AI-native customer engagement platform that also includes Iris® AI, Khoros' rebuilt social media management and brand care system. Your customers are a chorus. Khoros helps you conduct it. Aurora AI "is where the chorus comes into the light," turning questions into enduring knowledge and peer connection into scale. Iris AI is the messenger that carries what matters into every social stream.

Together, Aurora AI and Iris AI transform customer conversation into orchestrated intelligence. Aurora AI evolves the Khoros community platform. Iris AI unifies social listening and publishing to turn millions of voices into actionable signals across every channel, monitoring billions of sources in 187 languages.

A customer who posts in a community forum, opens a support ticket and tags the brand on social media is one customer with one problem. Aurora AI and Iris AI treat them that way. Community interactions inform care routing. Social sentiment feeds into community analytics. AI agents on both sides learn from the same customer data. The result is a single, connected view of every customer relationship across every channel.

Since acquiring Khoros in May 2025, IgniteTech's internal operations, driven by AI, have achieved ticket resolution rates from 5% to 60%, reduced support backlogs by 82% and cut platform downtime by 97%.

Why Point Solutions Fall Short

Smaller vendors, for example, Bevy, which started as an events and meetup management tool, have attempted to expand into community forums and AI-assisted Q&A. But an events platform that added discussion boards as an afterthought is not an enterprise-grade community platform. It does not include real-time AI moderation. It does not include a community language model that learns how each customer's members actually communicate. It does not include brand care. It does not include social media management across 187 languages. It does not include integrated customer service. And it does not come with the implementation depth, security certifications or scale that enterprises require.

"There are companies out there with 70 employees and low double-digit millions in revenue running comparison pages against Khoros," said Vaughan. "But we've spent 25 years learning what the enterprise community actually requires. A point solution built for meetups is not the same thing as a platform built for the world's largest brands. Aurora AI and Iris AI together cover the entire customer engagement surface. Community. Care. Social. Analytics. All of it connected. All of it AI-native and built by the AI Enterprise Software company. That's not something you can replicate by stitching a forum onto an events tool."

Sell, Design, Build

Under IgniteTech, Khoros did not build Aurora AI behind closed doors and unveil it on launch day. For months, the team used AI-accelerated prototyping to create working previews and put them directly in front of Khoros customers. Small teams ran short iterations over days, not quarters, showing customers where the product was heading and incorporating their feedback in real time. Features were validated before they were built. Priorities were set by the people who would use the platform, not by a roadmap committee.

"We don't pitch slides anymore," said Vaughan. "We prototype fast, show customers something real and ask them what's wrong with it. Then we fix it and show them again. By the time we ship, customers have already shaped the product. That's how you build something people actually want instead of something that just demos well."

Free Migration from Community Classic Through December 31, 2026

Khoros is also announcing that its AI-powered professional services teams will perform migrations from Khoros Community Classic to Aurora AI at no charge through December 31, 2026.

Under legacy Khoros ownership, community migrations were projects that lasted many months and cost customers up to $500,000. IgniteTech believes that AI-accelerated services can compress that timeline and eliminate that cost entirely.

"Legacy Khoros charged customers half a million dollars to migrate their communities, and the projects dragged on for months," said Vaughan. "We're going to put our money where our mouth is and do it for free, because we want every customer on Aurora AI. That's how confident we are in what we've built."

IgniteTech has not announced an end-of-life date for Khoros Community Classic. However, as previously communicated to all customers, all new feature development is exclusive to Aurora AI. Customers running Community Classic will continue to receive support and maintenance, but the innovation roadmap belongs to Aurora AI.

These announcements also coincide with the relaunch of the Khoros digital presence at khoros.ai. "This isn't a domain change," said Vaughan. "It's a signal. We fundamentally transformed this company, and khoros.ai is where that story lives."

About Khoros

Khoros exists because two companies refused to pick a lane. When Lithium Technologies, the pioneer of online brand communities since 2001, merged with Spredfast, a leader in social media management, they built a bridge between community and social that no one else had. For 25 years, that bridge has been Khoros's competitive advantage. Today, powered by IgniteTech and rebuilt as AI-native, Khoros connects community, care, social and analytics through Aurora AI and Iris® AI. The platform has powered over 4,000 communities, generates 1.8 billion site visits per year and saves brands more than $500 million annually in support costs. Visit khoros.ai to learn more.

About IgniteTech

Founded in 2010, IgniteTech is a leading AI-first enterprise software company. With a track record of successful acquisitions and rapid innovation, IgniteTech's solutions power businesses worldwide. The company's 2025 acquisition of Khoros expanded its portfolio to include one of the most widely deployed digital-first customer engagement platforms in the enterprise market, with over 4,000 communities powered since 2001 and 1.8 billion site visits per year. IgniteTech is rebuilding the entire Khoros platform as AI-native, including Aurora AI for community engagement and Iris® AI for social media management and brand care. Visit khoros.ai to learn more.

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