With Nearly 40% Short Interest, Is SoundHound Stock a Buy or Sell?

With about 40% short interest, SoundHound AI (NASDAQ: SOUN) is one of the most shorted stocks in the market. The company has been growing its revenue quickly, but a pending merger with troubled LivePerson (NASDAQ: LPSN) has investors betting against the stock. However, heavy short interest is a double-edged sword.

If a stock has high short interest, there is usually a bearish case to be made against it. In the case of SoundHound AI, its merger with LivePerson will bring considerable debt and a business currently in decline. There is also a good chance that SoundHound AI will seek a future equity raise to pay off the debt it is taking on as part of the deal, as it has stated it will work to quickly retire the debt through a combination of cash and stock.

Missed Nvidia in 2009? This Rare Signal Is Flashing Again. In 2009, a "Double Down" signal flashed for a little-known chipmaker called Nvidia. For the first time in years, that same "Total Conviction" signal is flashing for a company 1/100th the size of Nvidia. Continue »

The flip side is that heavily shorted stocks can see huge short squeezes if they can prove the skeptics wrong. With LivePerson, SoundHound AI is gaining access to a large, established, albeit declining, customer base, especially in call centers and the customer service space.

Its goal will be to retain these customers and switch them to its more comprehensive and higher-priced AI voice technology and agentic AI platform. If the company can stabilize churn and upsell customers, this deal could be a huge boon for this growth stock .

SoundHound AI's core business, meanwhile, continues to perform well, and it's already shown it can integrate acquisitions well. Its earlier purchase of Amelia and its virtual agents helped it expand into new market verticals and provided key technology for its new voice-native agentic AI orchestration platform, OASYS.

The company has said that the launch of OASYS has increased excitement and accelerated deals, and that it is winning in demos, RFPs (requests for proposals), and pilots. The platform's ability to build AI agents and self-improve has been a big selling point, and it has been seeing pilots convert to large implementations at a record pace. Management noted that the platform has seen rapid adoption across verticals since its May launch, including a large eight-figure deal signed in less than 90 days after the initial demo.

Overall for Q2, SoundHound AI saw its revenue climb 45% to $61.9 million. However, the company does remain unprofitable, with an adjusted loss of $0.02 and negative adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) of $9.6 million. Its gross margin rose 610 basis points year over year to 45.1%, while its adjusted gross margins were flat year over year at 58.4%. It said acquisitions continued to have a temporary impact on its gross margins and that its goal is to still exceed 70% in the future.