SoundHound AI (SOUN) shares edged up 2.3% to $9.59 in late-morning trading Thursday, as investors braced for the voice-AI company's first-quarter earnings report due after the U.S. market closes. The company's earnings call is scheduled for 5 p.m. ET.
Options pricing suggests a significant move ahead. According to TipRanks, the $9.50 straddle — a combination of call and put options at that strike price — is trading at $1.47, implying a swing of roughly 15.9% following the earnings release. This sets an estimated trading range between $7.80 and $10.74.
Wall Street's consensus, as compiled by MarketBeat, calls for SoundHound AI to report $42.56 million in Q1 revenue, with a loss of 5 cents per share. The report follows a strong fourth quarter, where the company posted $55.1 million in revenue, a 59% year-over-year increase. Full-year 2025 revenue reached $168.9 million, nearly doubling with a 99% gain. Despite the top-line growth, the company still reported a non-GAAP net loss and an adjusted EBITDA loss for the quarter, highlighting that profitability remains a future goal.
SoundHound has been making headlines with recent strategic moves. This week, the company launched OASYS, its new agentic AI platform, which CEO Keyvan Mohajer describes as a "self-learning ecosystem" that moves beyond static AI. The platform is designed to handle planning and execution with less human intervention, a shift that IDC analyst Hayley Sutherland says is "becoming more important" as enterprise buyers seek improved governance and guardrails.
In May, SoundHound announced plans to acquire LivePerson for $43 million in equity value, targeting a larger share of the enterprise market. The deal is expected to close in the second half of 2026, subject to approvals and standard conditions. Management projects combined revenue of $350 million to $400 million by 2027, with an additional $500 million opportunity from the current customer base.
On the institutional side, Deutsche Bank increased its stake in SoundHound by 7% in the last quarter, now holding 683,420 shares worth $4.7 million as of March 31, according to Stocktwits. Mohajer told Stocktwits that building the platform to avoid reliance on any single big AI player was intentional, emphasizing that "flexibility is critical."
A potential partnership is also in the works. On Wednesday, Richtech Robotics announced a non-binding letter of intent with SoundHound to integrate its voice AI technology into service robots. The first test is planned for a beverage-service demo at the National Restaurant Association Show in Chicago. James Hom, SoundHound's co-founder and chief product officer, described the collaboration as a way to "close the loop" between spoken commands and physical actions.
Despite the buzz, the competitive landscape is daunting. In a piece highlighted by Yahoo Finance, 24/7 Wall St. urged investors to weigh SoundHound's run-up against heavyweight AI names like Nvidia, Alphabet, and Oracle, which dominate the core AI infrastructure layer. The core debate for SOUN is whether it can carve out a niche as specialized agent software or compete with the scale and recurring revenue of major AI players.
The risk is clear: with the stock pricing in a mid-teens implied move on earnings, there is little room for ambiguity in guidance, especially since the LivePerson deal is not yet finalized and the Richtech partnership remains tentative. Even a revenue beat may not suffice unless management clearly outlines how OASYS and these recent deals will alter the profit trajectory. At this stage, SoundHound's earnings are less a routine quarterly check-in and more a referendum on how long investors will continue to buy into its agentic-AI story before the financials catch up to the pitch.
