SoundHound Analysis: Will This Overlooked AI Stock Be the Surprise Winner of 2026?

SoundHound stock was very volatile throughout 2025. Excitement surrounding investments made by Nvidia (NVDA) towards the beginning of 2024. After the chipmaker made a profit and exited the scene, the enthusiasm was lost and the stock price dropped. By the end of 2025, SoundHound stock price dropped by more than 55% in a four month span. That was a risk-off environment and for small-cap AI companies, the prices ran too fast. It resulted in a market rest, waiting for the next move in price.

The fundamentals, however, were the opposite. During the first 3 quarters of 2025, revenue increased by 100%, the backlog of orders was more than 1 billion, and management expected to break even by 2026. SoundHound stock dropping bookings and deployments continues to reflect the company during this time.

Multiple factors influenced the 2025 outlook. At the outset of this price adjustment, after a short period of time, several investors began to become less confident about the magnitude of future revenue growth rates based on their perceived cash flow from the company over time. You thus had price-to-sales within the high teens into the 20s price range as related to SoundHound on future price-to-sales and price-to-sales associated with trailing revenue amounts depending on the timing and methodology used to measure the company.Second, the macro headwinds were strong, with higher rates and a tighter risk appetite impacting companies more on forward than current earnings. Third, once Nvidia drops out, a change in perception occurs although SoundHound's commercial traction remains the same.

Competition was also a headline factor. Wendy’s (WEN) rolled out its own drive-thru system based on technology from Alphabet (GOOG) (GOOGL), a reminder to investors that tech giants can be tough competitors. Nevertheless, there were also validations from SoundHound’s own customers in the market. Famous-name renewals and expansions and new deployments in automotive demonstrated that buyers want voice experiences that are fast, accurate, and aware of context.

The stage is set for a bullish 2026, but not a sure thing. The company is moving into the year with momentum: a larger backlog, faster revenue recognition as long-term contracts ramp, and a more cohesive product story around agentic AI.If SoundHound can execute on its goal of reducing losses to near break-even, demonstrate consistent gross margin improvement, and convert backlog into live deployments on schedule, investors could well reward that execution.

What has the potential to push the results above expectations is the synergy effect of voice-first agents and a "good-enough" understanding of user intents. Agentic AI, meanwhile, needs systems that not only talk, but do the right things with minimal supervision. SoundHound uses voice tech to work with a variety of stimuli, including latency, accents, and interruptions. It is important that they succeed when launching their voice tech in cars and restaurants; it will be their first set of tests in a fast-paced environment. From those tests, they will be able to build trust with other industries that value speed and efficiency.

It is true that trust in a company's value is a big factor. Even with a primary reset in their stock expected in late 2025, the current stock prices suggest that investors expect a lot of improvement in the company's value quickly, including an increase in profitability. To cut a clear path to profit, SoundHound will need to keep operating expenses low, continue to gain customers, and show that the Amelia integration is leading to larger contracts and shorter sales cycles.Upside catalysts might be the addition of a new large auto OEM partner, faster restaurant network rollouts, and marquee enterprise deployments in regulated industries. It's possible the firm will be bought out by a big platform company, but that is not a base case to plan for.

While buying SoundHound stock, you may need to look at key indicators that will help you tell the noise from the signals. Indicators of success will be sustained revenue growth by meeting or exceeding our backlog conversion estimates and increasing gross margins through improved operating efficiencies and cost control providing us with a path to profitability along with the addition of new customers for agentic AI in specific industries such as automotive, food service and regulated companies. These case studies provide an understanding of how to manage real-world complexity while being scalable.

If the company is able to execute, then anticipation of SoundHound share prices in 2026 can transition from speculation to reality. Conversely, if the growth rate declines or if the business lacks efficiencies in its operations, then regardless of the significant opportunity to expand market size, the share price will stay depressed. Ultimately, SoundHound may end up being the ‘darkhorse’ by continuing to offer a consistent product line while providing measurable added value to customers through sound business and cost management practices.

SoundHound has found an incredibly compelling opportunity in the voice-first agentic AI space with insurmountable demand for its offerings and solutions that no one can match, allowing it the chance to blow away the rest of the pack in this category. The way things are executed from 2026 through 2030 will show whether it’s successful.

Valuation and execution risk exist for the stock of SoundHound. SoundHound will still need to prove that cross selling works and also that the product roadmap aligns well with the Amelia acquisition’s ability to be a part of its business.

There’s a standard of competition you’ve got to compete against, too. Major customers and partners will almost certainly rely on in-house implementations, as they have the resources and reach within their ecosystems. To maintain its competitiveness, SoundHound must continue providing low levels of latency, high levels of reliability, and accurate intent inference. As well, the introduction of agentic systems may add additional inference workload and impact gross margin contribution. Finally, vertical concentration may accelerate learning and specialization within the auto and the restaurant sectors, but it may negatively impact performance during slowdowns that can be caused by the size of IT budgets and overall macro conditions that can affect customer readiness to roll out large-scale deployments of solutions developed in the pilot phase.