SoundHound AI Q1 Earnings Call Highlights

Key Points

• SoundHound AI posted Q1 2026 revenue of $44.2 million, up 52% year over year, with strength across enterprise AI, automotive, financial services, restaurants, healthcare and technology. Management said no customer represented more than 10% of revenue.
• The company’s planned LivePerson acquisition is central to its growth strategy, with management calling it a “transformational” move that could expand its enterprise reach across more than 30 countries. SoundHound said the deal could help support $350 million to $400 million in 2027 revenue, assuming it closes in the second half of 2026.
• SoundHound highlighted OASYS, its new agentic AI platform, as a major product initiative designed to deploy AI agents across multiple channels and reduce reliance on manual maintenance. The company also reaffirmed its 2026 revenue guidance of $225 million to $260 million and ended the quarter with $216 million in cash and no debt.

SoundHound AI NASDAQ: SOUN reported first-quarter 2026 revenue of $44.2 million, up 52% from a year earlier, as management pointed to broad enterprise demand, automotive growth and continued expansion across financial services, restaurants, healthcare and technology.

CEO and Co-Founder Keyvan Mohajer said the company “started the year strong,” adding that excluding the impact of acquisitions, SoundHound’s automotive and IoT AI business grew 88% year over year. CFO and Co-Founder James Hom said financial services and automotive led the quarter’s growth, while healthcare, restaurants and technology also made strong contributions.

Hom said SoundHound maintained customer diversification during the quarter, with no customer accounting for more than 10% of revenue. The company’s enterprise AI business remained its largest revenue contributor.

LivePerson Deal Seen as Expansion of Enterprise AI Strategy

A major focus of the call was SoundHound’s planned acquisition of LivePerson, which Mohajer described as a “transformational turnaround opportunity.” SoundHound announced two weeks before the call that it had entered into a definitive agreement to acquire LivePerson, a digital messaging and conversational AI company serving enterprise and mid-market customers.

Mohajer said the combined company would work with enterprise customers in more than 30 countries, including 12 of the top 15 global banks, four of the top five global airlines, four of the top five global automakers and 10 major telecommunications providers. He said the combined customer base includes 25 Fortune 100 companies.

SoundHound expects the deal to close in the second half of the year. Mohajer said the company would focus on strengthening LivePerson’s financial position, accelerating modernization of its platform and delivering faster innovation. He also said voice AI is one of the most requested capabilities from LivePerson customers, which SoundHound expects to offer immediately after closing.

Hom said that, assuming the LivePerson acquisition closes in the second half of 2026, SoundHound expects an “achievable revenue range” of at least $350 million to $400 million in 2027, including at least $100 million of “growable contribution” from LivePerson’s long-tenured customers. Management also said the combined business is expected to reach $500 million based on the existing customer base alone by offering SoundHound voice AI to LivePerson customers and digital-and-voice omnichannel solutions to SoundHound customers.

OASYS Platform Positioned as Unified Agentic AI System

Management also highlighted OASYS, SoundHound’s newly announced Orchestrated Agent System. Mohajer said the platform is designed to let AI build fleets of AI agents in minutes using existing documentation and integrations, replacing older build-and-deploy models that required ongoing manual maintenance.

According to Mohajer, OASYS allows businesses to build an AI agent once and deploy it across phone, text, web chat, kiosks, social media, televisions and vehicles. He said the platform combines SoundHound’s core technology with capabilities from its acquisitions into “one unified engine.”

Mohajer cited a Fortune 100 insurance customer that he said achieved more than $10 million in quarterly labor savings using SoundHound’s current platform. He said the customer’s AI served more than 21 million customers, maintained more than 96% routing accuracy, processed more than 1 million financial transactions and generated more than $5 million in savings through enhanced customer self-service. He said that customer has been testing OASYS in beta along with other large enterprise customers.

In response to an analyst question, Mohajer said larger existing customers would likely be among the first wave of OASYS migration and beta users, while new customers are expected to use the platform going forward. He said the migration of customers to OASYS is “the biggest priority for the company,” though SoundHound did not provide a specific number or timeline.

Margins, Expenses and Balance Sheet

SoundHound reported GAAP gross margin of 31% in the quarter. Non-GAAP gross margin was 50%, adjusted for non-cash amortization of purchased intangibles and employee stock compensation. Hom said the decline in the quarter was partly due to true-up costs from a third-party vendor used in the company’s digital-first business, which he said would not recur in future periods.

First-quarter operating expenses included:

• R&D expenses of $26.2 million, up 6% year over year, largely due to acquisitions and related headcount and development costs.
• Sales and marketing expenses of $19.2 million, up 60% year over year, primarily driven by acquisitions and go-to-market investments.
• G&A expenses of $25.7 million, up 39% year over year, primarily due to legal, advisory and other acquisition-related costs.

Adjusted EBITDA was a loss of $26.7 million. GAAP net loss was $25 million, or $0.06 per share. Hom said GAAP results were affected by an approximately $39 million change in the fair value of contingent liabilities tied to completed acquisitions, which he described as non-operating and non-cash. Non-GAAP net loss was $26.6 million, or $0.06 per share.

The company ended the quarter with $216 million in cash and equivalents and no debt.

Full-Year Outlook Reaffirmed

SoundHound reaffirmed its 2026 revenue outlook of $225 million to $260 million. Hom said the company still expects revenue to ramp through the year because of customer seasonality and timing of large renewals and new deals, though he said seasonality should even out as recurring revenue grows.

Management said SoundHound is continuing to pursue cost synergies from acquisitions while making “calculated and time-bound” investments in its foundation models. Mohajer said SoundHound’s Polaris speech foundation model will power OASYS, and the company plans to invest in specialized language models and speech synthesis so that most OASYS interactions can run on SoundHound’s own models rather than third-party frontier models.

Mohajer said that investment is expected to be less than 1% of SoundHound’s market capitalization this year and is intended to reduce future costs as customer traffic migrates to OASYS.

Automotive, Restaurants and Enterprise Deals

SoundHound said it signed a new seven-figure commitment with a prominent Japanese automaker to deploy its voice assistant globally and expanded into South America with a multinational automotive OEM. Hom said the company doubled the number of units committed with a prominent Japanese manufacturer.

Mohajer also said SoundHound signed an agreement to integrate its voice AI into Walmart’s onn TV brand and is seeing progress in voice commerce as multiple TV and automotive brands integrate the company’s solution.

In restaurants, Mohajer said one quick-service restaurant customer reported that drive-thru locations using SoundHound voice AI generated more revenue than comparable locations without the technology. The company also reported increased adoption of its Voice Insights product.

During the question-and-answer session, management said SoundHound is not seeing pricing pressure in automotive. Mohajer said generative AI and live generative AI upgrades have allowed the company to increase revenue per unit, and he identified agentic AI, OASYS and voice commerce as further potential monetization opportunities in vehicles.

About SoundHound AI NASDAQ: SOUN

SoundHound AI, Inc is a voice AI and conversational intelligence company specializing in speech recognition, natural language understanding and sound identification technologies. Founded in 2005 and headquartered in Santa Clara, California, the company initially gained recognition with its music discovery app before pivoting to enterprise-grade voice AI solutions. Over the years, SoundHound AI has built a comprehensive platform that enables developers and businesses to embed conversational intelligence into a wide range of products and services.

The company's core offering is the Houndify voice AI platform, which provides customizable speech-to-meaning technology, domain-specific natural language understanding and text-to-speech capabilities.

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