SANTA CLARA, May 1, 2026, 12:06 PDT
• SoundHound AI shares jumped roughly 17% Friday afternoon, just ahead of the voice-AI company’s upcoming first-quarter earnings.
• Investors will be watching to see if the latest deals push the company toward more consistent growth—and put profits within reach.
SoundHound AI shares surged roughly 17% to $9.31 Friday afternoon, sending the voice and conversational AI firm back into the spotlight as its first-quarter results approach on May 7. The rally arrives with investors grappling with the company’s ramped-up growth ambitions, mounting losses, and the ongoing turbulence in AI software stocks.
The timing’s key here. SoundHound is set to deliver its earnings after the bell on Thursday, May 7, with a conference call lined up for 2:00 p.m. Pacific—marking its first quarterly update since unveiling plans to acquire LivePerson and scale up its rollout with Casey’s General Stores.
Investors will be watching the May report for a clearer sense of the underlying business ahead of the LivePerson acquisition. For the fourth quarter, SoundHound notched $55.1 million in revenue, a 59% jump from the same period last year. 2025 full-year revenue came in at $168.9 million, nearly doubling with a 99% increase. Despite the growth, the company logged a GAAP net loss of $14.0 million for the year; its non-GAAP net loss, which strips out items like stock comp and acquisition costs, was $53.9 million.
Wall Street’s stance stays mostly upbeat—cautious optimism, but not universal. TipRanks has tagged SoundHound with a “Strong Buy” consensus: five analysts are bullish, one is holding, and the average price target lands at $14 for the next year. The range runs from a high of $20 down to $9. TipRanks
Swings could get amplified by who owns the stock. According to TipRanks, public companies and individuals account for 66.20% of SoundHound’s ownership, with ETFs next at 17.38%, mutual funds at 14.01%, insiders holding just 1.94%, and other institutional investors at 0.47%. That structure tends to make shares more sensitive to moves after earnings and anything tied to AI news.
SoundHound is making a sizable move with its planned acquisition of LivePerson, the enterprise messaging outfit, in a deal valued at roughly $43 million in equity. According to SoundHound, LivePerson processes around a billion customer messages every month. Once the transaction closes, the merged company expects to serve enterprise clients in over 30 countries.
SoundHound CEO Keyvan Mohajer described the merger as joining forces between “two complementary conversational AI pioneers.” From LivePerson, CEO John Sabino noted the fading difference between “talking” and “typing.” SoundHound often uses the phrase agentic AI—software able to handle tasks and act with minimal human input. SoundHound AI
SoundHound can point to a recent restaurant win: Casey’s has now rolled out its AI ordering agents at over 2,600 stores after the tech handled upwards of 21 million customer interactions, according to both companies. “More efficiently across thousands of locations”—that’s how Casey’s CIO Sanjeev Satturu described the impact of the deployment for his team. GlobeNewswire
Analysts see the LivePerson acquisition as positive, though they’re clear it doesn’t solve every problem. TheStreet, referencing Wedbush, noted the firm kept its Outperform call and $12 target on SoundHound. The Wedbush team said the move might help set SoundHound up for a “transformational market shift” and expand its customer reach. TheStreet
Competition isn’t going anywhere. In its annual report, SoundHound described the voice-AI space as “highly competitive and rapidly changing,” cautioning that bigger tech players could have the edge with deeper pockets, more engineers, and better access to user data. Cerence, for its part, also pushes AI-driven products for automotive voice experiences. SEC
Execution remains the wild card here. SoundHound expects to wrap up its LivePerson deal sometime in the back half of 2026, assuming it clears all necessary hurdles. Management is pitching a $500 million revenue target, banking on the current client roster. Even so, filings highlight plenty of warning signs: putting two companies together isn’t easy, shares could swing sharply, and competitors might outpace them or cut prices.
That leaves the May 7 report with a tight focus. Investors want to see growth that goes beyond just acquisitions, better margins, and real proof that major clients—think restaurants, automotive, healthcare, financial services—are actually deploying the products widely. The shares have already surged. Now SoundHound needs to deliver the numbers.
