SoundHound Bets Big on Multilingual AI: Can It Outrun Rivals?

SoundHound AI, Inc. SOUN is doubling down on its multilingual and multimodal foundation model, Polaris, as a cornerstone of its competitive edge in the voice AI landscape. In first-quarter 2025, the company highlighted that Polaris now supports nearly 30 mature languages—substantially more than many of its rivals—and outperforms peers in noisy environments with up to 35% lower word error rates and four-times faster average latency.

This aggressive multilingual push is timely. As enterprises scale globally and voice interfaces expand into customer service, hospitality, and automotive applications, language agility becomes critical. SoundHound’s positioning is particularly strong in international markets, where legacy players have struggled with localization. Integration of Polaris across acquisitions such as SYNQ3, Allset, and Amelia has already led to enhanced upsell and cross-sell traction across verticals, further strengthening its value proposition.

Yet, competition is fierce. Big Tech incumbents like Amazon and Google are expanding their voice AI stacks, while startups crowd the market amid the Gen AI wave. Although SoundHound’s tech credentials are deep, execution remains key. Gross margins slipped in the first quarter due to acquired contracts, and the path to profitability hinges on scale, operational efficiency, and customer retention.

Still, with strong enterprise demand, over 2 billion voice queries per quarter, and a growing pipeline, SoundHound’s multilingual edge may prove a durable moat—if it can maintain its innovation lead and convert trials into long-term revenue.

Can SOUN Outpace GOOGL and BIDU in Voice AI Innovation?

In the multilingual voice AI race, SoundHound faces stiff competition from both tech giants and niche specialists. Two notable rivals are Alphabet Inc. GOOGL and Baidu, Inc. BIDU. Alphabet’s Google Assistant remains a dominant force globally, offering multilingual capabilities and deep integration across Android and smart home devices. GOOGL’s strength lies in scale, brand trust, and search-backed contextual awareness—advantages that continue to challenge SOUN’s enterprise-focused strategy.

Meanwhile, Baidu is leveraging its Ernie Bot and deep AI research in China to expand multilingual support in voice interfaces, especially across automotive and smart devices. Baidu’s strength in Mandarin and regional dialects gives Baidu an edge in Asian markets, where SoundHound is still building its presence.

While SOUN may outshine GOOGL and BIDU in real-time response and speech accuracy in noisy environments, both GOOGL and BIDU are aggressively investing in conversational AI, making the competitive road ahead increasingly tough for SoundHound.

SOUN’s Price Performance, Valuation and Estimates

SoundHound’s shares have gained 16.8% in the past three months, outperforming the Zacks Computers - IT Services industry’s 1.6% growth.

SOUN Price Performance

In terms of its forward 12-month price-to-sales ratio, SOUN is trading at 22.53, up from the industry’s 18.55.

P/S (F12M)

Over the past 60 days, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for SOUN’s 2025 loss per share has remained unchanged at 16 cents. Nonetheless, the estimated figure indicates an improvement from the year-ago loss of $1.04 per share.
 

SOUN currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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