SoundHound AI (Nasdaq: $SOUN) Stock Hub 2026: LivePerson Vote Adjourned to September 2, Record Q2 and Deal Arithmetic

01 The quarter that just landed: Q2 2026, released August 5 after the close

SoundHound AI released second quarter results after the close on August 5, 2026, filed as exhibit 99.1 to a Form 8-K, and held its call at 5:00 p.m. Eastern. Revenue came in at $61.897 million against $42.683 million a year earlier, an increase of 45.0%. That is the highest quarterly revenue in the company’s history and, as management pointed out, roughly ten times the revenue reported in the second quarter of 2022, the quarter in which SoundHound began trading as a public company.

The profitability line improved on every measure the company reports. GAAP gross margin rose from 39.0% to 45.1%. GAAP operating loss narrowed from $78.051 million to $43.298 million. GAAP net loss narrowed from $74.724 million to $42.817 million, or $0.10 per share against $0.19. Adjusted EBITDA was a loss of $9.607 million against a loss of $14.300 million. Cash and cash equivalents stood at $202.776 million at June 30 with no debt.

Two qualifications belong next to those numbers rather than several paragraphs later. First, the year-ago comparison is distorted: the second quarter of 2025 carried a $31.359 million charge from the revaluation of contingent acquisition liabilities, and the second quarter of 2026 carried a $3.697 million gain from the same line. Strip that single non-cash item out of both quarters and the operating loss goes from roughly $46.7 million to roughly $47.0 million, which is to say it does not improve at all. Second, non-GAAP gross margin was 58.4% in both quarters, unchanged to the decimal. The GAAP gross margin improvement is real, but it is the GAAP figure that moved, not the underlying one.

02 Executive summary

SoundHound sells voice and agentic AI to enterprises through a platform it calls OASYS, launched in May 2026, built on the Amelia technology it acquired in 2024. The business has three revenue engines that behave differently: automotive and IoT licensing, restaurant ordering, and enterprise customer service across healthcare, financial services and telecommunications. Revenue is growing quickly, the company is not profitable on any measure, and the gap between the two is being financed by an at-the-market equity programme rather than by debt.

The quarter itself was strong on the top line and mechanically better on the bottom line. The more consequential fact is that SoundHound is in the final stage of acquiring LivePerson, a company that reported $243.742 million of revenue in 2025 against SoundHound’s $168.920 million. The amount payable to LivePerson’s common shareholders is $42,784,532.64 in SoundHound stock, adjusted downward for any shortfall in LivePerson’s cash balance, which is why the proxy says those holders would end up with roughly 0.9% to 1.5% of the company. That is not the size of the transaction. SoundHound is also settling LivePerson’s first and second lien secured notes in its own shares, and the company’s own pro forma filing puts total estimated consideration at $271.8 million and total shares issued at roughly 42.6 million. Every regulatory condition has been satisfied. The shareholder vote remains the substantive open condition: the August 20 meeting was adjourned to September 2 because the required majority of all outstanding shares had not yet been reached.

Three things make this a difficult position to hold with confidence in either direction. The company has raised the floor of its guidance by $5 million while leaving the ceiling where it was, which is a narrower move than the phrase “raises full year outlook” suggests. It is issuing close to a tenth of itself to acquire a business whose revenue is larger than its own but has been shrinking, and integrating it will absorb management attention at a moment when the finance function is being run on an interim basis. And 42.8% of the float is sold short, which means the price reacts to news with a violence that has little to do with the underlying arithmetic. The after-hours move from $6.43 to roughly $8.05 is an illustration of that, not a verdict on the quarter.

03 Market Data And Peer Comparison

Price and performance figures below are based on the completed session of Friday, August 7, 2026. Float, ownership, short interest, average volume and the consensus target are from Finviz, pulled on the same date. Company financial figures come from SEC filings and company releases, each carrying its own reference date.

Peer comparison, all figures at the August 7, 2026 close

Short interest at 43.20% of the float is the highest in this comparison group and among the highest of any company in the sector. A figure of that size means the price reaction to a given piece of news is amplified by positioning as much as it is driven by the news, which is the mechanical explanation for the 13.28% move on August 7 following the second quarter release.

On analyst coverage the honest position is a narrow one. The consensus target above is a Finviz aggregate of third-party estimates pulled on August 7, 2026. Individual houses, ratings and note dates were not verified for this update, so no coverage table is presented. A consensus figure without named notes behind it is a market-data point, not research, and it is neither a company figure nor a Merlintrader forecast.

04 The second quarter numbers, line by line

Every line above is taken directly from the company’s own statements of operations. The arithmetic has been checked in both directions: cost of revenues subtracted from revenues gives the stated gross profit, the six expense lines sum to the stated total operating expenses, revenues less total operating expenses gives the stated operating loss, and the operating loss plus $2.663 million of other income less $2.182 million of income taxes gives the stated net loss. Loss per share divides to $0.0995, which rounds to the reported $(0.10).

05 A labelling problem in the press release worth knowing about

The cash flow table in the earnings release is headed “Quarter Ended” and shows $59.969 million of cash used in operating activities, $32.727 million used in investing, $46.699 million provided by financing and a net decrease of $45.714 million. Those figures are not the quarter. They are the six months.

The proof is in the same 8-K. Exhibit 99.2, the condensed financial statements, presents the identical numbers under the heading “Six Months Ended June 30”. The beginning-of-period cash balance in that table is $249.166 million, which reconciles to $248.490 million of cash plus $676 thousand of restricted cash at December 31, 2025, the start of the financial year rather than the start of the quarter.

The practical consequence is that anyone reading only the press release will conclude SoundHound burned $60 million of operating cash in three months. It did not. Cash and cash equivalents went from $216 million at March 31 to $202.776 million at June 30, a decline of roughly $13 million in the second quarter, and that decline is after the company raised $48.481 million from equity sales during the half. The half-year operating burn of $59.969 million is the correct figure, and it compares with $43.682 million in the first half of 2025.

This is a presentation issue in a press release, not a restatement and not an accounting problem. The statements in exhibit 99.2, which are unaudited as quarterly statements always are, are internally consistent. It is flagged here because the mislabelled table is the one most likely to be quoted.

06 The guidance raise, stated precisely

The headline of the release says the company “raises full year outlook”. The specific change is this: on May 7, 2026, reporting first quarter results, SoundHound reaffirmed a full year 2026 revenue range of $225 million to $260 million. On August 5 that range became $230 million to $260 million. The floor moved up by $5 million. The ceiling did not move.

With $106.092 million booked in the first half, the new range implies second half revenue of between $123.9 million and $153.9 million. The lower end of that would be roughly 17% growth over the first half; the upper end would be roughly 45%. The company has now delivered $44.2 million and $61.9 million in consecutive quarters, so the low end of its own range implies a slowdown from the current run rate and the high end implies continued sequential acceleration.

The release also states that guidance does not include LivePerson, and that SoundHound “plans to update its guidance accordingly” once that transaction closes, which it expects before the end of 2026. Any comparison between the current outlook and a post-close outlook will therefore not be like for like.

07 Five quarters of revenue

Total revenue by quarter, GAAP, in millions of dollars

Sources: quarterly earnings releases filed as exhibit 99.1 to Forms 8-K on November 6, 2025, February 26, 2026, May 7, 2026 and August 5, 2026. Bars are scaled to the $61.897 million high. Q3 2025 is derived by subtraction: full year 2025 revenue of $168.920 million less first half revenue of $71.812 million less fourth quarter revenue of $55.059 million gives $42.049 million. Q1 2026 is derived the same way from first half revenue of $106.092 million less second quarter revenue of $61.897 million, and matches the $44.2 million the company reported in May.

The pattern is a business with a pronounced fourth quarter and a first quarter that gives some of it back, growing through the cycle. The sequential jump from $44.2 million to $61.9 million is the largest in the series and is the reason the stock moved after hours. It is also the reason the unchanged ceiling on guidance reads oddly: a company that has just posted its largest sequential increase and left the top of its range untouched is either being conservative or is seeing something in the second half that the range is designed to absorb.

08 What SoundHound actually sells

The platform

SoundHound’s current product framing is OASYS, launched in May 2026 and announced alongside first quarter results on May 7, described by the company as a self-learning, orchestrated agentic AI system on which organisations build and deploy conversational agents that carry out transactions, tasks and workflows. Underneath it sits the technology from Amelia, the enterprise conversational AI business SoundHound acquired in 2024, plus the company’s own speech and language stack, which it says is backed by more than 400 patents. On July 13, 2026 Gartner placed SoundHound as a Leader in its 2026 Magic Quadrant for Conversational AI Platforms.

The three revenue engines

Automotive and IoT is the oldest business: voice assistants embedded in vehicles and consumer devices, sold to manufacturers, with revenue recognised over the life of the units shipped. In the second quarter Stellantis increased unit adoption and added live generative AI, Hyundai expanded unit adoption of the same capability, and the company signed what it describes as a seven-figure deal with a major automotive infotainment software company in China plus a new agreement with an unnamed automotive brand for in-car voice commerce transactions.

Restaurants is the most visible: drive-thru and phone ordering. In the quarter the company reported continued expansion with Five Guys, IHOP and Jersey Mike’s, said an unnamed pizza brand is now live in more than 75% of its locations, signed Ruby Tuesday for both Smart Answering and Smart Ordering, and renewed Habit Burger, Red Lobster and Torchy’s Tacos. On July 23, 2026 Deliverect, a restaurant order-management platform, announced a partnership to route SoundHound voice orders into kitchens through its certified point-of-sale integrations.

Enterprise customer service is where the growth narrative now sits: healthcare, financial services, insurance and telecommunications. The quarter included a seven-figure deal with a nationally ranked health system employing 30,000 people, renewals with Rakuten Securities and a British multinational telecoms operator present in fifteen countries, and, announced separately on July 29, 2026, the expansion of MUSC Health’s “Emily” agent into retail and specialty pharmacies, a deployment the company says has handled more than 2.2 million patient calls since 2024.

Channel

Two channel agreements were disclosed for the quarter: a multi-year partnership with a Latin American company described as an initial eight-figure deal covering a network spanning more than twenty countries, and a partner agreement with a global IT services and consulting firm. Neither counterparty is named.

09 The LivePerson acquisition, in the numbers the company actually filed

SoundHound agreed to acquire LivePerson under a merger agreement dated April 21, 2026, amended and restated on July 2, 2026. Two merger subsidiaries are involved: Lightspeed Merger Sub Inc. merges into LivePerson first, and Lightspeed Merger Sub II Inc. merges into it immediately afterwards. The filings do not state why the structure has two steps, but the difference between them falls on the shares held through the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange: those are converted at the second merger and receive cash rather than stock.

Why the widely quoted figure is the wrong one

The number that circulates is $42,784,532.64. That is the Aggregate Consideration Amount payable to holders of LivePerson common stock, reduced by any LivePerson Shortfall Cash and increased by the aggregate exercise prices of in-the-money options. It is a real number and it is in the 8-K. It is also a small fraction of what SoundHound is issuing.

The pro forma financial information SoundHound filed on July 13, 2026 sets out the full calculation, using a SoundHound share fair value of $6.21 as of June 25, 2026:

The secured note settlement is the transaction. LivePerson’s first lien notes carry total consideration of $178,007,734 and the second lien notes $83,207,733, a combined $261,215,467, and SoundHound expects to settle both entirely in Class A common stock at a $7.00 floor price, producing 25,429,676 and 11,886,819 shares respectively. Against 435,822,508 shares outstanding at June 30, the full 42,633,300 shares represent dilution of roughly 9.8%.

The company states that the final share count and consideration could differ significantly from these figures because of movements in the SoundHound share price up to closing. It also assumes LivePerson settles its 0% convertible notes due 2026 in cash before close, and notes a remote possibility that SoundHound assumes them instead, in which case consideration and goodwill would be unaffected.

The collar, and why the share price matters mechanically

The SoundHound Closing Stock Price is the average of the daily volume-weighted average prices over the ten consecutive trading days ending three trading days before closing, subject to a floor of $7.00 and a cap of $12.00. Within that band, the number of shares issued moves inversely with the price and the value transferred stays roughly constant. Outside it, the mechanism stops protecting the counterparty: if the price is below $7.00, consideration falls ratably with the shortfall against the floor, and if it is above $12.00 it rises ratably with the excess.

SoundHound closed at $6.43 on August 5, below the floor. It traded around $8.05 after hours, above it. Where the ten-day average sits in the days before closing is not a detail: it determines how much value the note holders and shareholders on the other side actually receive, and it determines how many shares SoundHound has to print.

Conditions, timing and the break fee

Closing also requires the Notes Restructuring Transactions to be consummated, Nasdaq listing approval for the new shares, the absence of a material adverse effect on LivePerson, and the usual accuracy and covenant conditions. LivePerson owes SoundHound a $5,000,000 termination fee plus transaction expenses in specified circumstances, including a change of board recommendation, termination to accept a superior proposal, or failure of the notes restructuring, with expense reimbursement capped at $3,750,000 where the fee is triggered by the notes restructuring.

10 What LivePerson brings, and what it costs to carry

On a pro forma basis for the year ended December 31, 2025, combining SoundHound’s historical $168.920 million, a further $42.781 million of revenue from Interactions, the business SoundHound acquired on September 3, 2025, and LivePerson as adjusted at $243.742 million, revenue would have been $455.443 million. LivePerson alone would have contributed more than half of it.

That is the case for the deal in one line and the risk in the same line. A business generating $243.7 million of annual revenue is not being sold at this price because it is healthy. LivePerson’s secured notes are being converted into equity rather than repaid in cash, its common equity is worth a rounding error relative to its revenue, and the merger agreement contains a mechanism that reduces the consideration if LivePerson arrives at closing with less cash than a defined threshold, set at $74 million or $71 million depending on timing, less any 2026 convertible notes repurchased since April 1.

The pro forma combined balance sheet shows total assets of approximately $1.016 billion. On the operating side, the pro forma adjustments reduce combined sales and marketing by $17.3 million and research and development by $15.9 million while increasing cost of revenues by $7.6 million and general and administrative by $7.1 million, which is the shape of an integration that is expected to remove overlapping commercial and engineering cost rather than to grow the combined top line immediately.

11 Cash, burn and how the gap is being financed

Cash and cash equivalents at each period end, in millions of dollars

Sources: quarterly earnings releases and condensed balance sheets. The December and June figures are exact balance sheet amounts of $248.490 million and $202.776 million; the March figure is the $216 million the company stated in its May 7, 2026 release. Bars are scaled to the December high.

The company carries no debt, and the current ratio is 3.91, calculated from $277.045 million of current assets against $70.875 million of current liabilities. Against that, operating activities consumed $59.969 million in the first half of 2026, up from $43.682 million in the first half of 2025, and investing activities consumed a further $32.727 million, of which $26.501 million was a payment related to an asset acquisition and $5.404 million was capitalised software development.

The financing side is where the shares come from. In the first half SoundHound raised $48.481 million in gross proceeds from sales of Class A common stock under its Second Equity Distribution Agreement, paying $970 thousand of associated costs, and took in $3.923 million from option exercises and the employee stock purchase plan. It also paid $3.538 million to settle contingent acquisition liabilities and $1.000 million to settle deferred holdback liabilities.

Put plainly: the operating business consumed about $60 million of cash in six months, the at-the-market programme supplied about $48 million of it, and the balance came out of the existing cash pile. That is a functioning arrangement while the equity market is receptive and the share price is high enough to make sales efficient. It is a structural dependency, not a one-off, and it is the reason share count is the number to watch alongside revenue.

12 Share count, dilution and the earn-out machine

Shares issued and outstanding, Class A plus Class B, in millions

Balance sheet figures: 390,070,691 Class A plus 32,535,408 Class B at December 31, 2025; 403,287,100 Class A plus 32,535,408 Class B at June 30, 2026. The third bar adds the 42,633,300 shares in the company’s own estimated preliminary consideration table for the LivePerson merger and is an illustration of that estimate, not a reported figure. Bars are scaled to the pro forma total.

Class A shares rose by 13,216,409 in six months, or 3.4%, principally from equity sales and employee plans. Weighted average basic shares rose 7.6% year over year. Neither figure includes the LivePerson issuance, which on the company’s own estimate would add close to another 10% in one step.

There is a second, less visible source of shares. The contingent acquisition liability line reflects earn-out shares from earlier acquisitions that are marked to market every quarter. It produced a $3.697 million gain in the second quarter, a $43.089 million gain across the first half, and a $144.741 million gain in the first half of 2025. Those swings are non-cash and they flow through operating expenses, which is why GAAP operating loss can improve or deteriorate sharply without anything changing in the business. The same line explains the strange fact that SoundHound reported net income of $55.208 million in the first half of 2025 and a net loss of $67.845 million in the first half of 2026 while revenue grew 48%.

13 Short Interest, Positioning And Retail Sentiment

Short interest stood at 42.80% of the float as of the most recent data available at the August 5 close, on a float of 395.33 million shares, with a short ratio of 5.70 days of average volume. Beta is 2.81 and average daily volume is 29.7 million shares.

Those numbers are the mechanical explanation for a 25% after-hours move on a quarter that beat on revenue and raised the floor of guidance by $5 million. At more than 40% of the float short, any result that removes a near-term reason to be short forces covering into a market with thin after-hours depth. The move says something about positioning and very little about valuation.

They also cut the other way. The same positioning means disappointing news, a delayed close, an unfavourable vote or a guidance reset after the merger would be amplified in the opposite direction. A 42.8% short float is not a bullish indicator or a bearish one; it is a statement that the stock will not move proportionally to the information.

The block below is a snapshot of the Stocktwits flow, with its date. These are opinions of retail traders and non-professional investors, not analyst research, and they measure attention and how one-sided positioning has become rather than anything about the business.

14 Management and the open CFO seat

Keyvan Mohajer, co-founder, remains chief executive. James Hom, also a co-founder and the chief product officer, has been interim chief financial officer since April 3, 2026, when Nitesh Sharan left for a leadership role at a quantum computing company. The company announced the transition on March 18, 2026, said Sharan would stay on as an adviser and that an executive search firm had been engaged for a permanent successor. As of August 6, 2026 no appointment has been announced.

This matters more than it usually would. A company closing an acquisition that adds more revenue than it currently generates, integrating a second acquisition completed in September 2025, running a continuous at-the-market equity programme and carrying a mark-to-market earn-out liability is asking a great deal of a finance function led on an interim basis by an executive whose primary role is product. It is a specific, checkable thing to watch rather than a criticism: the announcement of a permanent CFO, or its continued absence through the close, is information.

15 Verified developments since the last quarter

No product launch, executive appointment, capital raise announcement or new legal proceeding was disclosed by the company between July 1 and August 6, 2026 beyond the items listed above. The securities class action filings that appear in searches relate to a class period of May 10, 2024 to March 3, 2025 concerning internal control weaknesses tied to the SYNQ3 and Amelia acquisitions, with a lead plaintiff deadline of May 27, 2025, and are not new.

16 Catalysts to monitor

17 The two cases, stated as fairly as possible

The constructive case

Revenue grew 45% to a record, the largest sequential increase in the series, and the company has now compounded from $84.7 million in 2024 to $168.9 million in 2025 to an implied $230 million or more in 2026. Adjusted EBITDA loss narrowed to $9.6 million on $61.9 million of revenue, which puts operational break-even within sight of the current run rate rather than several years away. Gartner placed the platform in the Leader quadrant. There is $202.8 million of cash and no debt. LivePerson adds more revenue than SoundHound generated in 2025 for shares rather than cash, at a moment when the target has no better alternative, and every regulatory approval is already in hand.

The sceptical case

Stripping out the mark-to-market earn-out line, operating losses did not improve year over year. Non-GAAP gross margin was flat at 58.4%. The guidance ceiling did not move. The half-year operating burn of $60 million is larger than a year ago and is being covered by continuous share issuance, with close to 10% more dilution arriving with LivePerson. The company is integrating its third acquisition in under three years with an interim CFO, and the target’s revenue base is one that a secured-note conversion suggests is under pressure. Nothing in the release quantifies retention, backlog or bookings, so the durability of the revenue cannot be tested from outside.

18 Scenario framework

These are analytical frameworks for organising what to watch, not forecasts, targets or recommendations.

Deal closes and integrates

LivePerson holders approve at the reconvened September 2 meeting, the notes restructuring completes, the merger closes in the fourth quarter and management issues combined guidance. Attention shifts to whether combined revenue holds near the $455 million pro forma level or declines as LivePerson’s base runs off, and to whether the cost adjustments in the pro forma are realised. Share count settles near 478 million.

Deal slips or fails

The vote fails or is adjourned, or the notes restructuring does not complete, or the outside date passes. SoundHound keeps its cash and avoids the dilution and stands alone on a $230 million to $260 million revenue base with a $60 million half-year burn. Note that a simple failure of the shareholder vote is not one of the events that triggers the $5 million termination fee: that fee is tied to a change of board recommendation, a superior proposal or the failure of the notes restructuring. The standalone story becomes the only story.

Neither, for a while

The transaction closes on schedule but the combined guidance arrives late or is wide, the permanent CFO search continues, and the 10-Q shows concentration or retention data that changes the read on revenue quality. With 42.8% of the float short, this is the state in which price movement is least connected to the fundamentals.

19 Merlintrader bottom line

The second quarter was a genuinely strong revenue print and a mechanically better loss. The 45% growth is real, the $61.9 million is a record, and the improvement in GAAP gross margin from 39.0% to 45.1% is the single cleanest number in the release. Set against that: the operating loss improvement disappears once the earn-out mark-to-market is removed from both periods, the non-GAAP gross margin did not move at all, the cash flow table is mislabelled in a way that overstates the quarterly burn, and the guidance raise moved only the floor.

The item that will decide the next six months is not in the quarter. It is the LivePerson merger, and specifically the gap between the $42.8 million figure that circulates and the $271.8 million of estimated consideration and 42.6 million shares in the company’s own pro forma filing. A reader who takes the smaller number away from this transaction has understood it as a bolt-on. It is not one: it is close to a tenth of the company, issued to absorb a business with more revenue than SoundHound has and a capital structure that had to be restructured to make the deal possible.

Everything now runs through three dated, checkable events: the reconvened September 2 vote, the ten-day volume-weighted average price that sets the final share count within the $7.00 to $12.00 collar, and the combined guidance that follows the close. Until those land, the after-hours price is a function of a 42.8% short float meeting a revenue beat, and the filings are the only place the arithmetic actually exists.

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