The company beats revenue expectations by a wide margin, with a CEO saying that businesses large and small are turning to AI for voice-based customer-service offerings

SoundHound's stock had fallen by almost 50% on the year through Thursday's close.

SoundHound AI Inc. says consumers are becoming less averse to talking on the phone with computerized customer-service agents, and that trend helped the voice-based artificial-intelligence company exceed revenue expectations for the latest quarter.

The company generated $42.7 million in second-quarter revenue, above the $32.9 million that analysts tracked by FactSet had been expecting.

SoundHound (SOUN) now projects $160 million to $178 million in revenue for the full year, while analysts had been modeling $159.6 million. Though the forecast topped the consensus view, it wasn't a huge raise versus the guidance of $157 million to $177 million offered three months ago.

The stock was rising more than 13% in Thursday's after-hours action.

The company plays into voice-based AI in various ways, from powering devices to virtual customer-service offerings to voice-enabled commerce.

SoundHound Chief Executive Keyvan Mohajer said that businesses and consumers alike are warming up to the virtual customer-service experience.

"It used to be maybe legacy automation for large call centers... but now it's going to be kind of a better-than-human experience for every business," he told MarketWatch. While the company has packages for companies with hundreds of locations, it also sells offerings to businesses with only a handful of locations, or perhaps just one.

Mohajer thinks that even for the smallest restaurants or service providers, it's "cost effective" to use AI customer service because if they miss regular phone calls, they could lose out on business.

SoundHound also sees ways to bring its different business segments together. For example, the company makes voice software for cars and voice-ordering software for restaurants, and it can help drivers order ahead at and navigate to partner restaurants. Mohajer said that this benefits auto partners through revenue-sharing agreements and benefits restaurant partners in the form of new customer leads.

The company is still in the red, booking a net loss of $74.7 million, roughly double the $37.4 million loss posted a year before.

SoundHound saw its profile grow on Wall Street last year when a securities filing from Nvidia Corp. (NVDA) revealed that the chip giant owned some SoundHound shares. Nvidia disclosed earlier this year that it sold its stake, and that's weighed on sentiment this year, with SoundHound's stock down by almost 50% over the course of 2025 to date.