SoundHound's Vertical AI Penetration Scales Up: Can It Drive Returns?

SoundHound AI, Inc. SOUN is accelerating enterprise adoption of its AI platform, supported by a surge in usage metrics and broader deployment across verticals. In the first quarter of 2025, enterprise KPIs surged, underscoring the platform’s scalability and operational relevance across multiple verticals. Ticket volumes grew 5x quarter over quarter, average resolution time dropped by nearly 50x, and automation rates improved approximately 50% in the same quarter.
 
The company’s voice AI engine processed over 2 billion queries in the first quarter. Meanwhile, active restaurant deployments exceeded 13,000 locations, with SoundHound handling approximately 10 million customer interactions each quarter in that segment.

Much of this enterprise momentum is anchored in Amelia 7.0, SoundHound’s recently launched agentic AI platform built on its proprietary Agentic Plus framework. Designed to autonomously perform multi-step business workflows, Amelia integrates seamlessly with existing enterprise systems and offers optional human escalation. Early adoption across verticals — including telecom, financial services, healthcare and hospitality — has translated into expanded deployments and contract renewals.

The company also expanded relationships with major clients like a British multinational telecom firm, several global insurers and one of the world’s largest hospitality chains. In the first quarter, three healthcare firms renewed and expanded contracts, while four financial institutions grew their deployments of SoundHound’s employee-facing AI solutions.

With diversified vertical exposure, fast deployment timelines and a growing base of multimodal AI use cases, SoundHound is starting to reposition itself as a scalable enterprise AI infrastructure provider.

How It Stacks Up to Competitors

C3.ai, Inc. AI is pursuing a partner-led strategy to scale enterprise AI. In the fourth quarter of fiscal 2025, the company reported a 419% year-over-year surge in partner-supported bookings and signed 193 deals through its ecosystem. C3.ai’s applications are embedded in Microsoft Azure’s sales catalog, enabling Microsoft’s global salesforce to co-sell across industries such as manufacturing, chemicals and defense. C3.ai is targeting over 600 enterprise accounts with Microsoft. The company believes partner leverage will be the key to driving long-term scalability and recurring revenues.

BigBear.ai Holdings, Inc. BBAI continues to focus on AI deployments across national security, supply chain and critical infrastructure. BigBear.ai is emphasizing mission-driven engagements, including deployments at the Department of Defense, Los Angeles International Airport and major U.S. shipbuilders. While its backlog reached $385 million, execution is still constrained by government procurement cycles and slower revenue conversion. BigBear’s strategy leans heavily on internal R&D, federal contracts and select international pilots, rather than broad commercial scaling.

SOUN’s Price Performance, Valuation & Estimates

Shares of SoundHound have gained 54.5% in the past three months compared with the industry’s growth of 23%.

From a valuation standpoint, SOUN trades at a forward price-to-sales ratio of 23.76X, significantly below the industry’s average of 19.75X.

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for SoundHound’s 2025 and 2026 earnings per share (EPS) implies a year-over-year uptick of 84.6% and 64.1%, respectively. The EPS estimates for 2025 have remained unchanged in the past 30 days.

SoundHound stock 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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