Voice Commerce: From Vision to Live Operations

SoundHound AI (NASDAQ: SOUN) has announced that its Voice Commerce strategy is transitioning from a long-term vision to pilot projects and advanced testing with global automakers and large fast-food chains. Company leadership stated that the launch into live operations is "imminent" — and the technology is already improving success rates in both new customer acquisition and contract renewals.

In practice, Voice Commerce means that a driver can — using only their voice — order food, pay for parking, book a restaurant table, or purchase goods directly from the car's onboard system. The technology connects automakers with merchants and creates a new revenue stream for both sides.

Record Numbers: 3 Billion Queries Per Quarter

The figures SoundHound has released suggest this is more than just a marketing promise. In the second quarter of 2025, the company reported record revenue of $42.7 million, representing year-over-year growth of 217%. The growth is driven by broad adoption across segments — enterprise, restaurants, and automotive.

Even more impressive is the volume of conversations processed: the platform handled nearly 3 billion voice queries in a single quarter, more than double the previous year. The restaurant segment surpassed the 14,000-location mark, and in automotive, a significant contract was added from a new OEM manufacturer in China.

In the first quarter of 2026, revenue further increased to $44.2 million (+52% year-over-year), and the company also introduced the OASYS platform.

OASYS: A Platform That Combines Voice and Agentic AI

SoundHound's key weapon is the new OASYS (Orchestrated Agent System) platform — a voice-native conversational AI system that combines autonomous reasoning with fixed rules and the ability for human intervention in real time. In other words: an AI agent that can complete a transaction even when it encounters an unexpected situation.

What sets OASYS apart from the competition? Above all, it is built on its own speech recognition model — it doesn't rely on third-party services like most chatbots. It handles noise in cars and busy restaurants, mid-sentence interruptions, and even language switching within a single conversation. According to published data, the company has accumulated over 400 patents over 20 years of development, and its technology outperforms the voice assistants of major tech companies in speed and accuracy.

The platform also features an "AI builds AI" mechanism — simply provide it with existing training data, transcripts, or corporate documentation, and it will automatically generate a configured agent ready for deployment. Once live, the agent self-improves daily based on analysis of all interactions.

In the Car and in the Restaurant: Where Voice Commerce Is Heading

SoundHound Voice Commerce isn't just targeting automakers. The technology connects three parties: drivers, car manufacturers, and merchants. For automakers, it's a new revenue stream beyond vehicle sales — every transaction made through the onboard system can generate a commission. For merchants, a new sales channel opens up without the cost of building their own app.

Practical scenarios the company demonstrates include:

• AI-powered drive-thru — a voice agent takes an order in a noisy environment, handles modifications, and performs upselling
• In-car purchasing — the driver confirms their usual coffee order by voice, and payment is completed before arrival
• Booking and payments — parking, restaurant reservations, movie tickets — all by voice, no clicking

Competition and Market Position

SoundHound isn't alone in the conversational AI space. Tech giants like Google (Gemini), Amazon (Alexa), and Apple (Siri) are investing billions into voice assistants. The key difference is focus: while Alexa or Google Assistant are general-purpose consumer assistants, SoundHound delivers specialized B2B solutions for specific industries — automotive, hospitality, insurance, and healthcare.

In the enterprise AI space, it also competes with companies like C3.ai, which is expanding into defense and manufacturing, or BigBear.ai, which focuses on government contracts and security. However, SoundHound has an advantage in vertical specialization — its models have been trained on real interactions in cars and restaurants, which took years and cannot be quickly replicated by competitors.

According to a company survey from June 2026, 96% of organizations report that deploying agentic AI met or exceeded return on investment expectations.

What Does This Mean for Europe and the Czech Republic?

SoundHound doesn't yet have a direct presence in the Czech market, but its partnerships with automakers — including European Stellantis (Peugeot, Citroën, Fiat, Opel) — mean this technology could reach cars that Czechs actually buy. Stellantis is among SoundHound's investors and customers and is integrating its voice platform into their infotainment systems.

From a European regulatory perspective, the context of the EU AI Act is important, as it classifies AI systems by risk level. Voice assistants and transactional systems fall into categories that require transparency and safety guarantees. SoundHound, with its emphasis on human-in-the-loop — meaning a human can intervene in the conversation when the AI hits a problem — has an edge over fully autonomous systems in this regard.

The restaurant branch is also interesting for the Czech market. There is currently a lack of widely available voice ordering in drive-thrus in the Czech Republic — if SoundHound decided to expand into Central Europe, it could reach out to local fast-food chains or gas stations.

Investment Appetite and Outlook

SoundHound's stock has gained 31.5% over the last three months, while the overall sector dropped 10.2%. A forward P/S ratio of 27.21× is significantly above the industry average (16.99×), reflecting investor expectations that Voice Commerce and the OASYS platform will ignite a new wave of growth.

The key question remains whether Voice Commerce can be transformed from pilot projects into a mass-market technology. If so, SoundHound could play a similar role in the voice economy that PayPal played in online payments — becoming an infrastructure layer on which additional services are built.