00:00 Speaker A
Not necessarily this week, software stocks in particular have been down on concerns about AI disruption, and companies like SoundHound AI are no exception. The company’s stock price has fallen more than 15% since the beginning of the year. Still, the voice recognition and Gen AI company announced a positive outlook for this year, and the company’s CEO, Keyvan Mohajer, joins me. Keevan, thank you so much for stopping by. Well, let’s talk about this result. Please tell us about your company. I know you’ve pivoted over the years. Your ticker first popped onto my radar during the 2022 Chat GPT moment. What were you doing?
00:52 Keevan Mohajar
Well, first of all, thank you for joining us. I’m glad to be back. SoundHound is a voice and conversational AI company. We believe that speaking is the most natural way to interact with devices and services. Well, we also believe that we are entering a new era where every product needs an AI agent and every business needs an AI agent. SoundHun provides solutions for both devices and services.
01:23 Speaker A
So you’re doing more than just transcription here. I hear you’re integrating audio in a lot of different ways and you’ve done a lot of mergers and acquisitions over the last few years. So tell me what your technology will allow you to do and what the future holds. Please tell us where your product will land.
01:46 Keevan Mohajar
Yes, SoundHun has been around for over 20 years. I was one of the co-founders of the dorms at Stanford University in the early days. Um, it started with voice recognition, but at the time we thought, uh, actually with my co-founders, what do they have in Star Trek that we don’t? Oh, they have a lot of stuff. But what we thought we could do was talk to robots and computers. And it’s not just voice-to-text conversion. You also need to understand the meaning behind that voice and that it is essentially voice AI. Combining speech recognition and natural language understanding, we’ve spent 10 years building a core technology we’re proud of. We believe it’s the best in the world and, um, we announced it 10, 11 years ago. Then we got in the car and started customer service. We now power millions of cars and televisions, and thousands of businesses, from seven of the top 10 financial institutions to insurance companies, hospitals and universities, and even one restaurant.
02:59 Speaker A
Yeah, I’m still waiting for the Star Trek holodeck experience. Maybe it will happen in a few years. But I understand that you’re breaking into some interesting industries here. One of them is quick service restaurants, fast food. I understand and correct me if I’m wrong. Half the time I can’t understand what the person on the other end of the line is saying. But AI understands that and integrates it into order management. Or how does it work?
03:32 Keevan Mohajar
Well, I’ll tell you two great things. First, automate ordering, whether you call the restaurant or go to the drive-thru. Well, if you actually call, many restaurants won’t answer the phone because they’re busy with other things. So with our AI, no calls go unanswered. I’ll answer the phone right away. We are very patient. we speak multiple languages. We accept orders. We do upsells so we can actually increase the size of the ticket. And then as for the drive-thru, it’s all going to be automated again. Well, we do live shows in a lot of different places. Um, um, when you talk to an AI, you can actually speak in different languages and the AI can understand you. Um, and um, we built a big footprint in the restaurant and automotive space and then we introduced voice commerce. This allows you to tie them together. When you’re driving your car, if you want to talk to your car to navigate, ask the weather, or anything else, our AI will do it for you. Well, actually why do you have to go to the drive-thru and wait in line? You can actually talk to your car. Well, the car agent that we serve speaks to the restaurant agent that we also serve. You can order in advance. That’s voice commerce, the third pillar of our business that we recently introduced. Um, so we generate new leads for the sellers that power us from the devices that we power. Ah, that’s a net new user. We generate revenue from it. We share revenue with device manufacturers, car manufacturers, TV manufacturers, and that creates a flywheel effect for us.
05:13 Speaker A
Ah, the future is here. That’s all I can say. And we understand that they work in a wide range of industries, from healthcare to financial services to insurance. Please take a few minutes to talk about the future of your company. Are there any headwinds you are trying to overcome? What is your message to investors who want to seriously sit down and get things right?
05:43 Keevan Mohajar
Um, um, what we always balance is, uh, investing in growth and investing in innovation, and of course, uh, making sure that we’re very close to profitability and not over-investing. And we did a great job. Our company has a very strong balance sheet. We have zero debt and growing revenue. Last year, our revenue increased 100% year over year. It increased by 60% in the fourth quarter. All pertinent profitability metrics have improved. Another record was achieved in the fourth quarter. In the fourth quarter, we signed the most customer contracts. Over 100 customers have signed the petition. And we start the year with a huge pipeline. So, uh, I, uh, we, uh, I think it’s more of a tailwind than a headwind to be honest. Three years ago, we were knocking on doors to get POC. Now they’re knocking on our door, but their budgets aren’t coming from the innovation budget, they’re coming from the IT budget. Therefore, I AI transformation is mandatory and we are the right partner for all our customers.
