SoundHound AI Inc (SOUN) 2024 Q2 法說會逐字稿

Hello, and thank you for standing by this. I would like to welcome you to the SoundHound Q2 2024 earnings conference call.

您好，感謝您對此的支持。歡迎您參加 SoundHound 2024 年第二季財報電話會議。

(Operator Instructions) I would now like to turn the conference over to Scott Smith, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

（操作員指示）我現在想將會議轉交給投資者關係主管史考特史密斯。請繼續。

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining our second quarter 2024 conference call. With me today is our CEO, Keyvan Mohajer; and our CFO Mitesh Sharan.

下午好，感謝您參加我們的 2024 年第二季電話會議。今天和我在一起的是我們的執行長 Keyvan Mohajer；和我們的財務長米泰什夏蘭 (Mitesh Sharan)。

We will begin with some short remarks. Before moving to Q&A, we would also like to remind everyone that we'll be making forward-looking statements on this call and actual results could differ materially from those suggested by our forward-looking statements. Please refer to our filings with the SEC for a detailed discussion of the risks and uncertainties that could affect our business and for discussion statements that qualify as forward looking statements.

我們將從一些簡短的評論開始。在進行問答之前，我們也想提醒大家，我們將在本次電話會議中做出前瞻性聲明，實際結果可能與我們的前瞻性聲明所暗示的結果有重大差異。請參閱我們向 SEC 提交的文件，以了解可能影響我們業務的風險和不確定性的詳細討論以及符合前瞻性聲明的討論聲明。

In addition, we may discuss certain non-GAAP measures. Please refer to today's press release for more detailed financial results and further details on the definitions, limitations and uses of those measures and reconciliations from GAAP to non-GAAP. Also note that the forward-looking statements on this call are based on information available to us as of today's date, and we undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statements except as required by law.

此外，我們可能會討論某些非公認會計準則措施。請參閱今天的新聞稿，以了解更詳細的財務表現以及有關這些措施的定義、限制和用途以及從公認會計原則到非公認會計原則的調節的更多詳細資訊。另請注意，本次電話會議的前瞻性陳述基於截至今日我們掌握的信息，除法律要求外，我們不承擔更新任何前瞻性陳述的義務。

Finally, this call is being audio webcast in its entirety on our Investor Relations website. An audio replay will be available following today's call.

最後，本次電話會議將在我們的投資者關係網站上進行全程音訊網路直播。今天的電話會議後將提供音訊重播。

And with that, I would like to turn the call over to our CEO, Keyvan Mohajer. Please go ahead.

說到這裡，我想將電話轉給我們的執行長 Keyvan Mohajer。請繼續。

Thank you, Scott, and thank you to everyone for joining the call today.

謝謝斯科特，也謝謝大家今天加入電話會議。

Before getting into the quarter, I wanted to talk about the announcement we made this morning to acquire a conversational AI leader, Amelia. This transaction is a natural extension of our strategy, and we saw a great opportunity to partner with a company that we believe will accelerate our mission of voice-enabling the world with conversational intelligence. Our vision has always been to create a conversational AI platform that exceeds human capabilities, delivers value and delights end users, creates an ecosystem with billions of products, and enables innovation and monetization opportunities for product creators. Today's announcement is a continuation of that path and now is the time for such a bold move.

在進入本季之前，我想談談我們今天早上宣布的收購對話式人工智慧領導者 Amelia 的公告。這項交易是我們策略的自然延伸，我們看到了與一家公司合作的絕佳機會，我們相信這家公司將加速我們透過對話智慧為世界提供語音支援的使命。我們的願景始終是創建一個超越人類能力的對話式人工智慧平台，提供價值並讓最終用戶滿意，創建一個包含數十億產品的生態系統，並為產品創造者提供創新和貨幣化機會。今天的公告是這條道路的延續，現在是採取如此大膽舉措的時候了。

SoundHound is a leader in voice AI and we have built a platform that we can perfectly leverage to expand into new markets. Coming together with Amelia is an important step along the way in this journey, and we are excited for a number of reasons. Most importantly, this significantly expands our penetration in conversational AI across new verticals and deep into hundreds of enterprise brands. We are doing this in end markets that are expected to grow massively over the coming years, with enterprise spending on generative AI projected to grow 15-fold over the next three years to nearly $250 billion.

SoundHound 是語音人工智慧領域的領導者，我們建立了一個可以完美利用該平台來拓展新市場的平台。與 Amelia 的合作是這趟旅程中的重要一步，我們出於多種原因感到興奮。最重要的是，這顯著擴大了我們在對話式人工智慧領域的滲透率，跨越新的垂直領域，並深入數百個企業品牌。我們正在終端市場進行這項工作，預計未來幾年這些市場將大幅成長，企業在生成式人工智慧上的支出預計將在未來三年內成長 15 倍，達到近 2,500 億美元。

Together, we combine decades of experience in conversational AI. We have a highly complementary suite of products and we believe we can offer best-in-class, scalable customer service support to a vast spectrum of businesses. The announcement today marks a significant and strategic expansion of SoundHound's existing customer service pillar. We are adding even more breadth and depth to this offering that has already seen substantial growth amid the accelerated adoption of voice and conversational generative AI solutions. Nitesh will provide some more insight into this deal and our overall M&A philosophy later on.

我們共同結合了數十年的對話式人工智慧經驗。我們擁有高度互補的產品套件，我們相信我們可以為廣大企業提供一流的、可擴展的客戶服務支援。今天的宣布標誌著 SoundHound 現有客戶服務支柱的重大策略擴張。我們正在為這項產品增加更多的廣度和深度，隨著語音和對話產生人工智慧解決方案的加速採用，該產品已經實現了大幅成長。Nitesh 稍後將提供有關這筆交易以及我們整體併購理念的更多見解。

Now, on to the quarter. Once again, we are reporting strong growth. Second quarter revenue was up 54% and cumulative subscriptions and bookings backlog roughly doubled year over year to $723 million. We also saw a steep increase in engagement with our technology. Our annual run rate of queries is now over 5 billion. We continue to see strong demand for our products, including SoundHound Chat AI in pillar one and our AI Customer Service solutions in pillar two.

現在，進入本季。我們再次報告強勁成長。第二季營收成長 54%，累計訂閱量和積壓預訂量年增約一倍，達到 7.23 億美元。我們也看到對我們技術的參與度急劇增加。我們的年查詢運行率現已超過 50 億次。我們繼續看到對我們產品的強勁需求，包括第一支柱中的 SoundHound Chat AI 和第二支柱中的人工智慧客戶服務解決方案。

Our value propositions are resonating with the industry. Customers choose us because they believe our innovation cycles are at a high level and results in powerful AI technology. They also know that we help them protect their brand, users and data. We have accumulated 20 years of intellectual property and technical innovation remains in our core DNA.

我們的價值主張引起了業界的共鳴。客戶選擇我們是因為他們相信我們的創新週期處於高水準並帶來強大的人工智慧技術。他們也知道我們幫助他們保護他們的品牌、用戶和資料。我們累積了20年的智慧財產權，技術創新仍是我們的核心DNA。

Last year, we announced Polaris, our multimodal, multilingual foundation model. Polaris now beats numerous benchmarks against state-of-the-art models in the industry. A growing number of our customers are switching to Polaris. The result is higher accuracy, better user experience, lower internal cost and faster response times. We can also deliver tuning and customizations much faster. These customizations have historically required long and expensive machine-learning training cycles. With Polaris, we can achieve them with just simple configuration changes.

去年，我們推出了多模式、多語言基礎模型 Polaris。Polaris 現在超越了業界最先進型號的眾多基準。越來越多的客戶轉向使用 Polaris。其結果是更高的準確性、更好的用戶體驗、更低的內部成本和更快的回應時間。我們還可以更快地提供調整和客製化。這些客製化歷來需要漫長且昂貴的機器學習訓練週期。借助 Polaris，我們只需更改簡單的配置即可實現這些目標。

Now, let me discuss some business updates in the second quarter. In pillar one, we now have cars in production in almost 20 markets and support dozens of languages. SoundHound Chat AI, our voice assistant with generative AI, is driving this high demand. DS Automobiles became the first brand to quickly turn a trial run to live production.

現在，讓我談談第二季的一些業務動態。在第一支柱中，我們現在在近 20 個市場生產汽車，並支援數十種語言。SoundHound Chat AI 是我們具有生成式 AI 功能的語音助手，正在推動這項高需求。DS Automobiles 成為第一個快速將試運行轉變為實際生產的品牌。

This was the first in-vehicle assistant with generative AI capabilities to go into production anywhere in the world, and the results have been so well received that Stellantis has continued to integrate SoundHound technology into a large number of models across multiple brands. In total, we are now live on the road with six Stellantis brands: Peugeot, Vauxhall, Opel, Citron and Alfa Romeo, and of course, DS Automobiles.

這是全球首個投入生產的具有生成式人工智慧功能的車載助手，其結果廣受好評，Stellantis 繼續將 SoundHound 技術整合到多個品牌的大量車型中。總的來說，我們現在共有六個 Stellantis 品牌上路：標緻、沃克斯豪爾、歐寶、香櫞和阿爾法羅密歐，當然還有 DS Automobiles。

SoundHound Chat AI combines the power of large language models with our AI-assistant, making it more capable and powerful. This is an upsell feature that will increase royalties from existing customers, and our booking this quarter increased as a result. This is important to emphasize. While historically there have been constant pressure from auto OEMs to lower their costs, for the first time, we are seeing their appetite to pay more. They want to upgrade to SoundHound Chat AI to deliver a much better user experience to their customers, and they're willing to pay the additional royalties to do so. Therefore, we expect our revenue per unit in pillar one will increase over time as more customers adopt the generative AI innovation in SoundHound Chat AI.

SoundHound Chat AI 將大型語言模型的強大功能與我們的 AI 助理結合，使其功能更加強大。這是一項追加銷售功能，將增加現有客戶的版稅，因此我們本季的預訂量有所增加。強調這一點很重要。雖然從歷史上看，汽車原始設備製造商一直面臨著降低成本的壓力，但我們第一次看到他們願意支付更多費用。他們希望升級到 SoundHound Chat AI，以便為客戶提供更好的用戶體驗，並且他們願意為此支付額外的版稅。因此，隨著越來越多的客戶採用 SoundHound Chat AI 中的生成式 AI 創新，我們預計第一支柱的單位收入將隨著時間的推移而增加。

Last quarter, we talked about [being] (ph) the first company to roll out this technology integrated in vehicles in Japan. And now, this quarter, we are also pleased to have signed a new contract to be the first company to roll out ChatGPT-style capabilities to in-vehicle voice assistants in Latin America. Initially, this will be with three brands and go into production in Brazil, Argentina and Chile.

上個季度，我們談到[成為]（ph）第一家在日本推出整合到車輛中的技術的公司。現在，在本季度，我們還很高興簽署了一份新合同，成為拉丁美洲第一家向車載語音助理推出 ChatGPT 式功能的公司。最初，該產品將由三個品牌生產，並在巴西、阿根廷和智利投入生產。

We also continue to gain interest and make progress with EV manufacturers. Earlier this year, we won a deal with a prominent US-based EV maker, which will go live imminently. SoundHound Chat AI will be integrated across its full fleet of market-leading vehicles. This will mark the first US-based OEM to integrate an assistant with generative AI capabilities. Additionally, we have expanded with an existing customer, a fast-growing EV manufacturer in Europe, to add SoundHound Chat AI to their digital assistant.

我們也繼續引起電動車製造商的興趣並取得進展。今年早些時候，我們與一家著名的美國電動車製造商達成了一項協議，該協議即將上線。SoundHound Chat AI 將整合到其市場領先的整個車隊中。這將標誌著第一家將助手與生成式人工智慧功能整合的美國 OEM 廠商。此外，我們還與現有客戶（歐洲快速發展的電動車製造商）合作，將 SoundHound Chat AI 添加到他們的數位助理中。

Last quarter, we also announced a partnership with Perplexity to bring cutting-edge online LLMs to SoundHound Chat AI. This has allowed us to offer a truly multifaceted, next-generation voice assistant to phones, cars and IoT devices. Perplexity helps SoundHound Chat AI provide accurate, up-to-date responses to web-based queries that static offline LLMs cannot currently fulfill, expanding the type and complexity of the questions the assistant is able to answer. The move made SoundHound Chat AI the most advanced voice assistant available on the market today, and we are currently in progress conversations with OEMs about having this capability go live.

上季度，我們也宣布與 Perplexity 合作，將尖端的線上法學碩士引入 SoundHound Chat AI。這使我們能夠為手機、汽車和物聯網設備提供真正多方面的下一代語音助理。Perplexity 幫助 SoundHound Chat AI 對靜態離線法學碩士目前無法​​滿足的基於網路的查詢提供準確、最新的回應，從而擴展了助手能夠回答的問題的類型和複雜性。此舉使 SoundHound Chat AI 成為當今市場上最先進的語音助手，我們目前正在與 OEM 商就啟用此功能進行對話。

Moving on to pillar two. This quarter, we won the business of three sizeable QSRs. This means that in total, we have now won deals with five of the top 15 QSRs based on the number of locations. One of the QSRs we engaged in Q2 was a large, well-known pizza restaurant with thousands of locations throughout the US. This means that SoundHound is now working with two of the biggest pizza chains out there. Each of these QSR brands represents a sizable opportunity to deploy our technology across thousands of locations. It's an exciting time. We are in a very fortunate position, so how we execute the business at this time will be critical to our performance in this space going forward, and we are mindful of this.

繼續討論第二支柱。本季度，我們贏得了三個規模較大的快餐店的業務。這意味著，以門市數量計算，我們目前已經贏得了前 15 家快餐店中的 5 家的訂單。我們在第二季度參與的 QSR 之一是一家大型知名披薩餐廳，在美國各地擁有數千家分店。這意味著 SoundHound 現在正在與兩家最大的披薩連鎖店合作。這些 QSR 品牌中的每一個都代表著在數千個地點部署我們的技術的巨大機會。這是一個令人興奮的時刻。我們處於非常幸運的位置，因此我們此時執行業務的方式對於我們未來在該領域的表現至關重要，我們注意到這一點。

Our customer service product portfolio is resonating with businesses of all sizes, so we are winning in large enterprises as well as small chains. It's become clear to us that very few companies can offer businesses of all sizes an affordable, fast and easy-to-implement solution that addresses their growing needs. We own our tech. We have data from real interactions and nearly 20 years of experience. We believe we are winning because of the data science and machine learning behind our proprietary software.

我們的客戶服務產品組合與各種規模的企業產生共鳴，因此我們在大型企業和小型連鎖企業中都取得了勝利。我們清楚地認識到，很少有公司能夠為各種規模的企業提供經濟實惠、快速且易於實施的解決方案來滿足其不斷增長的需求。我們擁有我們的技術。我們擁有來自真實互動的數據和近 20 年的經驗。我們相信，我們之所以獲勝，是因為我們專有軟體背後的數據科學和機器學習。

Last year, we introduced a product called Employee Assist, which uses our conversational voice AI technology to support employees like a copilot across a variety of tasks, via their headset or a tablet. We already have several customers benefiting from this new service. Those include some large QSR brands, and I'm proud to announce two prominent coffee chains have also signed up this quarter. We are finding that many customers are choosing to sign up for Employee Assist in combination with our drive-thru solution, Dynamic Interaction. They work together in tandem to handle and improve the customer experience, while supporting their employees.

去年，我們推出了一款名為 Employee Assist 的產品，該產品使用我們的對話式語音 AI 技術，透過耳機或平板電腦為員工提供支持，就像副駕駛一樣完成各種任務。我們已經有一些客戶從這項新服務中受益。其中包括一些大型快餐品牌，我很自豪地宣布兩家著名的咖啡連鎖店本季也已簽約。我們發現許多客戶選擇註冊員工協助與我們的得來速解決方案動態交互相結合。他們齊心協力處理和改善客戶體驗，同時為員工提供支援。

SoundHound Dynamic Interaction delivers what we believe to be the next generation of all voice AI interfaces. It is full duplex, it's multimodal. It does not require constant use of wake-up words and turn-taking, and can be seamlessly multilingual. We believe its impact on voice AI and conversational interfaces will be as meaningful as multi-touch technology on touch interfaces.

SoundHound 動態互動提供了我們認為的下一代全語音 AI 介面。它是全雙工的，它是多模式的。它不需要不斷使用喚醒詞和輪流，並且可以無縫地使用多種語言。我們相信它對語音人工智慧和對話式介面的影響將與多點觸控技術對觸控介面的影響一樣有意義。

Our AI solutions save costs for our customers, improve the experience of the users and also increase revenue by increasing throughput and proactively offering upsells. Our phone ordering solution are continuing to ramp up with existing customers like Jersey Mike's, and as mentioned earlier, we are penetrating into thousands of pizza chain locations across the US. We announced Beef 'O' Brady's where we are already live in all corporate locations and plan to roll out to 20 states very soon.

我們的人工智慧解決方案為客戶節省成本，改善用戶體驗，並透過提高吞吐量和主動提供追加銷售來增加收入。我們的電話訂購解決方案正在繼續與 Jersey Mike's 等現有客戶合作，並且如前所述，我們正在滲透到美國數千家披薩連鎖店。我們宣布 Beef 'O' Brady's 已在所有公司地點開設，並計劃很快推廣到 20 個州。

Going beyond restaurants, SoundHound Smart Answering is showing rapid growth within pillar two. We already have hundreds of locations live from single location small businesses to brands with multiple locations. Last quarter, we talked about Planet Fitness and we have already gone live and continue to roll out more. We are seeing great traction in franchise retail businesses and across a number of industries. These include personal care, professional services, home and local services, automotive services among others.

除了餐廳之外，SoundHound 智能反應在第二支柱領域也顯示出快速成長。我們已經擁有數百個地點，從單一地點的小型企業到擁有多個地點的品牌。上個季度，我們討論了 Planet Fitness，我們已經上線並繼續推出更多內容。我們看到特許經營零售業務和許多行業的巨大吸引力。其中包括個人護理、專業服務、家庭和本地服務、汽車服務等。

We are excited about Smart Answering because the number of industries it caters to opens up a massive market

我們對智能應答感到興奮，因為它所服務的行業數量打開了龐大的市場

for us to address with millions of businesses in the United States alone. The seamless implementation capabilities allow us to scale fast and the use cases for companies of all sizes are obvious. Whether it's handling multiple calls at once 24/7, conveniently filtering out spam calls, providing verbal and SMS responses, taking configurable actions, capturing leads with intelligent messaging and answering questions about policies, hours, products, services, pricing and more. We have built a competitive moat with our proprietary technology that is creating massive opportunity in customer service.

僅在美國，我們就可以與數百萬企業打交道。無縫實施能力使我們能夠快速擴展，並且各種規模的公司的用例都是顯而易見的。無論是24/7 一次處理多個電話、方便地過濾掉垃圾電話、提供口頭和短信回复、採取可配置的操作、通過智能消息傳遞捕獲線索以及回答有關政策、工作時間、產品、服務、定價等的問題。我們利用專有技術建立了一條競爭護城河，為客戶服務創造了巨大的機會。

On to pillar three where we are making great progress and accelerated that path this quarter with the acquisition of Allset. The ordering platform we acquire through Allset enables us to build a voice commerce ecosystem. The acquisition will ultimately enable consumers to use cutting-edge voice AI to order foods from their vehicles, phones and smart devices. Additionally, the Allset team brings a wealth of marketplace experience and knowledge that will make a voice commerce ecosystem a reality. We are creating a new category and together we plan to provide dynamic and convenient ways for people to order food and complete a range of other transactions just by speaking naturally.

在第三支柱方面，我們正在取得巨大進展，並透過本季收購 Allset 加速了這一進程。我們透過 Allset 收購的訂購平台使我們能夠建立語音商務生態系統。此次收購最終將使消費者能夠使用尖端的語音人工智慧從他們的車輛、手機和智慧型裝置上訂購食物。此外，Allset 團隊帶來了豐富的市場經驗和知識，將使語音商務生態系統成為現實。我們正在創建一個新類別，我們計劃共同為人們提供動態且便捷的方式，讓他們只需透過自然說話即可點餐並完成一系列其他交易。

And as we increase the notable names that we sign every quarter in pillar one and two, it also helps us get one step closer to mobilizing this strategy. With this strategic move, we have significantly increased our addressable market while creating new, more convenient and accessible consumer experiences. Our customer engagement with this vision has always been well received, with existing and prospective customers getting even more interested over time as our portfolio of customers using voice-enabled services grows. We always talked about what the flywheel effect with this vision and we are starting to see that take shape.

隨著我們每個季度在第一和第二支柱中籤署的知名人士的數量不斷增加，這也有助於我們在動員這一策略方面更進一步。透過這項策略舉措，我們大幅擴大了我們的目標市場，同時創造了新的、更方便、更容易獲得的消費者體驗。我們對這一願景的客戶參與一直受到好評，隨著我們使用語音服務的客戶組合的成長，現有客戶和潛在客戶越來越感興趣。我們總是談論飛輪對這願景的影響，我們開始看到它的形成。

In closing, we have consistently grown at a rate of 50% or more and continue to fortify our financial position, all while gaining market share, attracting new enterprise customers and creating some of the most innovative voice AI technology in the world. We are proud of the best-in-class experiences we are creating for our customers and their customers, but our ambitions to keep aiming higher and push the boundaries continue to grow. As an example of that ambition, today we acquired Amelia. Amelia is an innovative company that shares our passion for AI-fueled conversations. We are looking forward to leveraging our shared capabilities to offer the best AI customer support solutions available anywhere.

最後，我們持續以 50% 或更高的速度成長，並繼續鞏固我們的財務狀況，同時獲得市場份額、吸引新的企業客戶並創造一些世界上最具創新性的語音人工智慧技術。我們為我們為客戶及其客戶創造的一流體驗感到自豪，但我們不斷追求更高目標和突破界限的雄心壯志也在不斷增長。作為這項雄心壯志的一個例子，今天我們收購了 Amelia。Amelia 是一家創新公司，與我們一樣對人工智慧驅動的對話充滿熱情。我們期待利用我們的共享能力來提供隨處可用的最佳人工智慧客戶支援解決方案。

We are also pleased to welcome the team from Amelia to SoundHound and are excited about what we can do together. We believe the disruption in the market for AI we are seeing today is building towards our exact vision when we created SoundHound almost 20 years ago.

我們也很高興地歡迎 Amelia 團隊加入 SoundHound，並對我們可以一起做的事情感到興奮。我們相信，我們今天所看到的人工智慧市場的顛覆正在朝著我們大約 20 年前創建 SoundHound 時的願景而發展。

A lot of our predictions are now becoming a reality. With another strong quarter, where we beat market expectations for revenue, we couldn't be more pleased with the momentum we are seeing and the demand for our products and solutions. We look forward to continued engagements with our stakeholders as we create value. We are grateful to our amazing team that makes this all possible with their shared vision.

我們的許多預測現在正在成為現實。又一個強勁的季度，我們的收入超出了市場預期，我們對我們所看到的勢頭以及對我們產品和解決方案的需求感到非常滿意。我們期待在創造價值的過程中與利害關係人繼續合作。我們感謝我們出色的團隊，他們以共同的願景使這一切成為可能。

With that, I'll now turn the call over to Nitesh to talk about our financial performance, key growth drivers and outlook for the remainder of the year.

現在，我將把電話轉給 Nitesh，討論我們的財務表現、主要成長動力以及今年剩餘時間的前景。

Thank you, Keyvan, and good afternoon, everyone.

謝謝你，Keyvan，大家下午好。

Q2 revenue increased 54% year over year. The results are another positive mile marker on our growth journey where we achieved $13.5 million in revenue. This marks our fourth consecutive quarter exceeding $10 million in revenue. We meaningfully improved our balance sheet in the quarter by paying down our debt and completing the conversion of outstanding preferred equity.

第二季度營收年增 54%。這項成果是我們成長歷程中又一個正面的里程碑，我們實現了 1,350 萬美元的收入。這標誌著我們連續第四個季度的收入超過 1000 萬美元。透過償還債務並完成未償優先股的轉換，我們在本季有意義地改善了我們的資產負債表。

I mentioned before that our capital position is a source of strength. We want to maintain that strength because it affords us the opportunity to go on the attack when it makes sense for us. We do that through organic investments to fuel disruption, partnerships to help scale aggressively, and acquisitions to accelerate our pace.

我之前提到過，我們的資本狀況是力量的來源。我們希望保持這種優勢，因為它為我們提供了在對我們有意義時繼續進攻的機會。我們透過有機投資來推動顛覆、透過合作來幫助積極擴張、透過收購來加快我們的步伐來實現這一目標。

One of the measures we use to gauge customer traction is backlog. In Q2, our cumulative subscriptions and bookings backlog roughly doubled year over year to $723 million, with an average duration of slightly less than seven years. Most of the expansion this quarter was in the restaurant space, although we continue to gain traction with automotive partners. For example, with Stellantis adding five additional brands going into production with SoundHound Chat AI. Today, we announced and Keyvan noted earlier, our acquisition of conversational AI leader Amelia. Let me spend a minute explaining how we think about M&A.

我們用來衡量客戶吸引力的措施之一是積壓。第二季度，我們的累積訂閱和預訂積壓同比大約翻了一番，達到 7.23 億美元，平均持續時間略低於七年。儘管我們繼續獲得汽車合作夥伴的青睞，但本季的大部分擴張都是在餐廳領域。例如，Stellantis 增加了另外五個品牌，並透過 SoundHound Chat AI 投入生產。今天，我們宣布收購對話式人工智慧領導者 Amelia（Keyvan 之前也提到過）。讓我花一點時間解釋一下我們如何看待併購。

First, we believe having a programmatic M&A approach can be value-generating. Our acquisition philosophy stems from our overall strategy and vision, which is to voice-enable the world with conversational intelligence and transform the next wave of how humans will interact with technology, increasingly with voice and natural conversations.

首先，我們相信採用程式化的併購方法可以創造價值。我們的收購理念源於我們的整體策略和願景，即透過對話智能為世界提供語音支持，並改變下一波人類與技術互動的方式，越來越多地透過語音和自然對話進行互動。

We know the requisite underpinning technology to enable this vision is here now. In fact, we've built a lot of it ourselves. And we continue to see the customer demand and adoption for these capabilities growing. When we acquired SYNQ3 earlier this year, it was an accelerant for our restaurant business. Last quarter, when we announced the Allset acquisition, it was to catalyze our monetization pillar to connect voice-enabled services and products seamlessly together. Today's acquisition of Amelia is about accelerating more broadly in pillar two, customer service and significantly expanding our industry reach.

我們知道實現這一願景所需的基礎技術現在已經存在。事實上，我們自己建造了很多這樣的東西。我們繼續看到客戶對這些功能的需求和採用不斷增長。當我們今年稍早收購 SYNQ3 時，它是我們餐飲業務的促進劑。上個季度，當我們宣布收購 Allset 時，是為了促進我們的獲利支柱將語音服務和產品無縫連接在一起。今天對 Amelia 的收購旨在更廣泛地加速第二支柱客戶服務領域的發展，並顯著擴大我們的產業影響力。

The primary filters we have been using to select appropriate acquisition targets have been, one, does it fit within our long-term strategy? Two, will it amplify or accelerate our pathway to realize that strategy? Three, can we effectively operationalize it and drive meaningful synergies? And four, can we buy it at the right price, appreciating the risks that inherently come from such transactions? Amelia checked those boxes for us. While it would be a meaningful acquisition with a lot of complementarity, we don't take the integration effort lightly and know it will take some time to get it right, but the prize together was too attractive to bypass in our opinion, especially with the enterprise traction and demands we have been seeing in the marketplace. We just announced this today, so it's still quite early and we know there will be questions, so please note that we plan to share more and dive much deeper on the opportunity we see. Stay tuned for more details.

我們用來選擇合適收購目標的主要過濾器是：第一，它是否符合我們的長期策略？第二，它會放大或加速我們實現該策略的途徑嗎？第三，我們能否有效地實施它並推動有意義的協同效應？第四，我們能否以合適的價格購買它，並認識到此類交易固有的風險？阿米莉亞幫我們勾選了這些框框。雖然這將是一次有意義的收購，具有很大的互補性，但我們不會掉以輕心地對待整合工作，並且知道需要一些時間才能將其做好，但在我們看來，這個獎項太有吸引力了，無法繞過，尤其是考慮到我們在市場上看到了企業的吸引力和需求。我們今天剛剛宣布了這一點，所以現在還為時過早，我們知道還會有問題，所以請注意，我們計劃分享更多資訊並更深入地探討我們看到的機會。請繼續關注更多詳情。

With that, let me now focus on and discuss the second quarter financials in more detail. Q2 revenue was $13.5 million, up 54% year over year. We continue to see growing automotive unit growth of healthy double digits in addition to unit price expansion, driven by our generative AI solutions and overall product expansion. The quarter benefited from a minimum guarantee edge solution purchased by Stellantis, and also from a year-over-year basis the contribution from SYNQ3. Within restaurants, we continue to scale with customers, sign meaningful new logos and further diversified product offerings. The quarter had nice balance across our pillars, where our restaurant business comprised roughly 25% of revenue.

現在，讓我更詳細地關注並討論第二季的財務狀況。第二季營收為 1,350 萬美元，年增 54%。在我們的生成式人工智慧解決方案和整體產品擴張的推動下，除了單價擴張之外，我們繼續看到汽車銷售以兩位數的健康成長。該季度受益於 Stellantis 購買的最低保證邊緣解決方案，以及 SYNQ3 的同比貢獻。在餐廳內，我們繼續擴大客戶規模，簽署有意義的新標誌並進一步提供多樣化的產品。本季我們的各個支柱實現了良好的平衡，我們的餐廳業務約佔收入的 25%。

In Q2, our gross margins were 63%, down year over year, largely resulting from the acquisition, including the mix of lower-margin call center agent business. Adjusting for acquisition impact, notably the non-cash amortization of purchased intangibles, gross margins would have been 67%. While the acquired call center business does weigh on our margins in the near-term, there is value in what this business can do for broader opportunities to come and what the data can bring to our models. That said, our goal over time is to automate and modernize.

第二季度，我們的毛利率為 63%，年減，主要是由於收購，包括利潤率較低的呼叫中心代理業務的組合。調整收購影響，特別是購買的無形資產的非現金攤銷，毛利率將為 67%。雖然收購的呼叫中心業務在短期內確實會影響我們的利潤率，但這項業務可以為未來帶來更廣泛的機會，以及數據可以為我們的模型帶來什麼，這些都是有價值的。也就是說，隨著時間的推移，我們的目標是實現自動化和現代化。

R&D expenses were $15.7 million in Q2, an increase of 34% year over year. We are prioritizing investments in disruptive innovation like our Polaris initiative to expand our suite of products to address a wider array of customer needs, and we continue fine-tuning the way we leverage large language models to provide even more value to customers at less cost. For example, we will continue to be thoughtful and opportunistic about which models we work with versus using our own and always keep the customers' needs at top of mind. In the end, our ability to arbitrate between models is a differentiator that we will continue to expand upon.

第二季研發費用為1570萬美元，年增34%。我們優先投資顛覆性創新，例如我們的Polaris 計劃，旨在擴展我們的產品套件，以滿足更廣泛的客戶需求，並且我們繼續微調利用大型語言模型的方式，以更低的成本為客戶提供更多價值。例如，我們將繼續深思熟慮並機會主義地對待我們使用哪些模型而不是使用我們自己的模型，並始終將客戶的需求放在首位。最後，我們在模型之間進行仲裁的能力是我們將繼續擴展的差異化因素。

Sales and marketing expenses were $5.7 million in Q2, an increase of 11% year over year. We continue to thoughtfully invest in go-to-market and customer engagement to capture the strong momentum and heightened demand. We are expanding reach through brand and industry marketing, demand generation and high ROI lead gen strategies.

第二季銷售和行銷費用為 570 萬美元，年增 11%。我們繼續在市場進入和客戶參與方面進行深思熟慮的投資，以抓住強勁的勢頭和不斷增長的需求。我們正在透過品牌和行業行銷、需求挖掘和高投資回報率的潛在客戶開發策略來擴大影響力。

G&A expenses were $9.5 million in Q2, an increase of 48% year over year. The increase in G&A reflects two main elements that we talked about the past few quarters; our year-over-year comparison continues to be impacted by investments in financial and non-financial processes and internal controls to support requirements under SOX 404(b), as we became a large, accelerated filer last year. Our G&A was also negatively impacted by acquisition-related costs in the quarter.

第二季的一般管理費用為 950 萬美元，年增 48%。一般行政費用的增加反映了我們過去幾季討論的兩個主要因素；隨著我們去年成為大型加速申報者，我們的同比比較繼續受到財務和非財務流程以及支持 SOX 404(b) 要求的內部控制投資的影響。本季我們的一般管理費用也受到收購相關成本的負面影響。

All operating expense line items were impacted by the SYNQ3 acquisition. Non-cash employee stock compensation was $7.3 million in Q2. As a result, our operating loss for Q2 was $22 million. This includes non-cash acquisition impacts related to the fair value accounting that will likely introduce volatility into this line for the foreseeable future.

所有營運費用項目均受到 SYNQ3 收購的影響。第二季非現金員工股票薪酬為 730 萬美元。因此，我們第二季的營運虧損為 2,200 萬美元。這包括與公允價值會計相關的非現金收購影響，這可能會在可預見的未來為該項目帶來波動。

OI&E was $14.7 million of net expense for the quarter. Compared to previous quarters, the increase in OI&E was mainly due to the one-time early repayment of our debt and associated extinguishment costs. We announced earlier in the quarter that we were able to repay the existing debt on favorable prepayment terms, allowing us to avoid sizable interest payments over the coming years.

本季 OI&E 淨支出為 1,470 萬美元。與前幾季相比，OI&E 的增加主要是由於一次性提前償還債務和相關的清償成本。我們在本季早些時候宣布，我們能夠以優惠的提前還款條件償還現有債務，使我們能夠避免在未來幾年支付大量利息。

And the net loss was $37.3 million in the quarter. This led to a GAAP net loss per share in Q2 of $0.11. Adjusting for non-cash acquisition-related amortization of purchased intangibles, fair value adjustments, M&A transaction costs, stock-based comp and other non-cash items such as the gain on bargain purchase, our non-GAAP EPS loss was $0.04 in the quarter.

該季度淨虧損為 3,730 萬美元。這導致第二季 GAAP 每股淨虧損為 0.11 美元。在調整與非現金收購相關的購買無形資產攤銷、公允價值調整、併購交易成本、股票補償和討價還價購買收益等其他非現金項目後，我們本季度的非公認會計準則每股收益損失為 0.04 美元。

Adjusted EBITDA was the loss of $13.8 million in Q2, improving sequentially by 10%. The year-over-year increase was driven primarily by acquisition impacts and growth investments we have been making in the business.

第二季調整後 EBITDA 虧損 1,380 萬美元，季增 10%。同比成長主要是由收購影響和我們在業務中進行的成長投資所推動的。

Our cash position at quarter-end was $201 million and no outstanding debt.

季末我們的現金部位為 2.01 億美元，沒有未償債務。

We see a market that is moving fast, and believe having a strong financial profile in times like these is crucial to success. We are in a position of strength and focused on creating long-term sustainable growth and profitability.

我們看到了一個快速發展的市場，並相信在這樣的時期擁有強大的財務狀況對於成功至關重要。我們處於優勢地位，專注於創造長期可持續成長和獲利能力。

With that, let me discuss our outlook for the remainder of 2024 and our prospects for 2025. We have made great progress. The core business is growing, our technology is permeating across and resonating with an increasing roster of amazing customers. We expect the acquisition of Amelia to improve our financial profile. There are top-line synergies and we also expect to be able to extract a lot of value from the combined companies. It's a little early in the process to be too precise, so let me build up how we see the rest of this year and entry into next year.

接下來，讓我談談我們對 2024 年剩餘時間的展望以及對 2025 年的展望。我們已經取得了很大的進步。核心業務不斷成長，我們的技術正在滲透到越來越多的優秀客戶中並引起共鳴。我們預計收購 Amelia 將改善我們的財務狀況。合併後的公司具有重要的綜效，我們也期望能夠從合併後的公司中獲得大量價值。現在這個過程還為時過早，不夠精確，所以讓我來談談我們如何看待今年剩下的時間和進入明年的情況。

We are cognizant that a significant acquisition like this will require heavy integration that will take time to fully align across the enterprise. We are baking this into our go-forward assumptions. As we noted in our press release this morning, we expect this acquisition to be accretive to earnings in the second half of 2025, and we now see 2024 revenue to exceed $80 million and 2025 revenue to exceed $150 million. There's much more potential here, but at this stage, it's appropriate for us to stay measured and calibrated on setting expectations.

我們認識到，像這樣的重大收購將需要大量整合，而這需要時間才能在整個企業內完全協調一致。我們正在將其納入我們的未來假設中。正如我們在今天早上的新聞稿中指出的，我們預計此次收購將增加 2025 年下半年的收益，我們現在預計 2024 年收入將超過 8000 萬美元，2025 年收入將超過 1.5 億美元。這裡還有更多的潛力，但在現階段，我們在設定期望時保持衡量和校準是合適的。

Amelia brings a diverse business with strong recurring revenue and also some other businesses that we are calibrating on to identify how best to fit them into our portfolio. In full transparency, there are lower growth and margin businesses where we want to assess the life cycle value of each contract to determine the best go-forward approach. These decisions may affect the pace of our growth or our trajectory on margins, so we need some time to finalize the plan. Ultimately though, we see a combined growth profile that is even more attractive than we were standalone with greater profitability, and we see tremendous value to share with customers, employees and partners over the coming years.

阿米莉亞帶來了具有強勁經常性收入的多元化業務，以及我們正在調整的其他一些業務，以確定如何最好地將它們納入我們的投資組合。在完全透明的情況下，對於成長和利潤率較低的業務，我們希望評估每個合約的生命週期價值，以確定最佳的前進方法。這些決定可能會影響我們的成長速度或利潤軌跡，因此我們需要一些時間來敲定計畫。但最終，我們看到的綜合成長狀況比我們單獨的成長更具吸引力，獲利能力更高，而且我們看到未來幾年與客戶、員工和合作夥伴分享的巨大價值。

In conclusion, we are happy with where we are. We are aggressively moving forward. And while we know the path forward won't be linear, we have a clear vision that we are accelerating towards.

總之，我們對目前的情況感到滿意。我們正在積極向前邁進。雖然我們知道前進的道路不會是線性的，但我們有一個正在加速實現的清晰願景。

Thank you. We will now move to Q&A.

謝謝。我們現在進入問答環節。

(Operator Instructions) Gil Luria, D.A. Davidson

（操作員說明）Gil Luria，D.A.戴維森

Hi, good afternoon. One for Keyvan, one for Nitesh, both on the acquisition. This is a transformative acquisition. So, one, Keyvan up until now, a lot of the strategy has been around autos and restaurants, pillars one, two and three. There's a very good alignment in the strategy between those end markets and that pillar framework. How do you see that changing now that you're bringing -- that you'll bring Amelia into the fold in terms of what verticals you're going to have and what your focus is going to be in terms of pillars?

嗨，下午好。一位是 Keyvan，一位是 Nitesh，兩人都參與了這項收購。這是一次變革性的收購。因此，第一，Keyvan 到目前為止，許多策略都是圍繞著汽車和餐館，支柱一、二和三。這些終端市場和支柱框架之間的策略非常一致。您如何看待現在您正在帶來的變化——您將把阿米莉亞帶入您將擁有的垂直領域以及您在支柱方面的重點是什麼？

Thanks for the question. And transformative is the right word. Thank you for mentioning that. So, the strategy just gets stronger. The Amelia acquisition makes us -- gives us a lot more scale in pillar two. We always knew we were going to expand beyond restaurants. We've said that restaurants to us are like what books were to Amazon. They started with books, now they sell everything. And we've always wanted to expand in AI customer service to other industries.

謝謝你的提問。變革是正確的字眼。謝謝你提到這一點。因此，該策略只會變得更強大。收購 Amelia 使我們在第二支柱領域獲得了更大的規模。我們一直知道我們要擴展到餐廳以外的領域。我們說過，餐廳之於我們就像書之於亞馬遜。他們從書籍開始，現在什麼都賣。我們一直希望將人工智慧客戶服務擴展到其他行業。

And when we looked at -- we have an amazing tech that we can deliver to these brands, but it takes time to penetrate the customer base and understand their needs and even integrate with their infrastructure, especially for bigger enterprise customers. And Amelia has accumulated 26 years of customers and integrations. They also have great complementary products and technologies. So, this just accelerates that vision. It gives us a much bigger scale in pillar two. And a lot of their customers also fit into our pillar three. They work with retail, ticket companies, insurance, financial services, retail, hospitality, and a lot of those actually have a very nice fit into the pillar three vision.

當我們看到時，我們擁有可以為這些品牌提供的令人驚嘆的技術，但需要時間來滲透客戶群並了解他們的需求，甚至與他們的基礎設施集成，特別是對於較大的企業客戶。而Amelia已經累積了26年的客戶和整合。他們也擁有很好的互補產品和技術。所以，這只會加速這願景的實現。它使我們在第二支柱方面具有更大的規模。他們的許多客戶也屬於我們的第三支柱。他們與零售、票務公司、保險、金融服務、零售、旅館業合作，其中許多實際上非常適合第三支柱願景。

Got it. Thank you. And Nitesh, I know you asked in your prepared remarks for a little more time, but want to talk -- as you talk about managing a company that next year is going to have $150 million, you're saying that accretive second half 2025, that -- strictly speaking, that just means your earnings would be higher than they would have been otherwise. In terms of the overall margin structure and where that could put you when you're managing a company that big, does it bring closer your breakeven in terms of your ability to generate cash flow, adjusted operating margins, and then even GAAP operating margins, what does it do to the timeline of hitting those milestones?

知道了。謝謝。Nitesh，我知道你在準備好的演講中要求多一點時間，但想談談——當你談論管理一家明年將擁有 1.5 億美元收入的公司時，你說的是 2025 年下半年的增值，嚴格來說，這只是意味著你的收入會比其他情況下更高。就整體利潤結構而言，以及當您管理一家如此大的公司時，它會讓您在產生現金流的能力、調整後的營業利潤率、甚至公認會計原則營業利潤率方面更接近盈虧平衡，它達到這些里程碑的時間表有何影響？

Sure. Thanks, Gil. So, yeah, I'll put the caveat up front. More details are certainly to come. We just announced this today. There will be filings and certainly a lot of details for us to talk through, but let me give you the high-level construct and the way we see this and the way we see us moving forward over certainly the near term, but more importantly, maybe over the medium and long term.

當然。謝謝，吉爾。所以，是的，我會把警告放在前面。更多細節肯定會到來。我們今天剛剛宣布了這一點。我們將會提交文件，當然還有很多細節需要討論，但讓我向您介紹一下高層結構以及我們看待這一問題的方式以及我們在短期內前進的方式，但更重要的是，也許是中長期的。

So, what we're really excited about here is Amelia is a software business, has strong customer traction, deep and generally really robust relationships that permeate over time and where you have -- you can expand and add upsell, cross-sell, expand services, products and expand margins. They do have multi-components to their business and we will integrate that with our profile. But I've said before, sort of pre this acquisition, over the long term, we should have strong growth profile, very healthy software margin, 70%-plus gross margins, and at scale, EBIT margins that are 30%-plus. And I don't think that changes at all with the acquisition.

因此，我們真正感到興奮的是Amelia 是一家軟體企業，擁有強大的客戶吸引力，深厚且普遍真正牢固的關係，隨著時間的推移而滲透到您所擁有的地方- 您可以擴展並添加追加銷售、交叉銷售、擴展服務、產品並擴大利潤。他們的業務確實有多個組成部分，我們將其整合到我們的個人資料中。但我之前說過，在這次收購之前，從長遠來看，我們應該擁有強勁的成長態勢、非常健康的軟體利潤率、70% 以上的毛利率，以及規模化的30% 以上的息稅前利潤率。我認為收購不會改變這一點。

I've said also that you got to think of us in phases. We are migrating to breakeven phase after sort of, call it -- I'll call it, cash utilization phase. And that's the next horizon for us. Going into next year and beyond, I think you should think of us as investing in these tremendous growth opportunities, because we do think of these as generational shifts in how humans interacting with technology, increasingly through natural conversations and increasingly through voice.

我還說過，你必須分階段考慮我們。我們正進入損益平衡階段，我稱之為現金利用階段。這就是我們的下一個願景。進入明年及以後，我認為您應該將我們視為對這些巨大增長機會的投資，因為我們確實認為這些是人類與技術互動方式的代際轉變，越來越多地通過自然對話和越來越多地透過語音進行互動。

And so, we're going to be in sort of, call it, that breakeven zone for a bit. And we'll be funneling incremental dollars into our growth opportunities because there are tremendous growth opportunities. And so, I think from an EBIT margin and even what I mentioned about sort of accretive in the second half, to your point, that's earnings-related, but even our profile is generally capital-light. And so that translates very seamlessly into cash flow as well.

因此，我們將暫時處於損益平衡區。我們將把增量資金投入到我們的成長機會中，因為存在巨大的成長機會。因此，我認為從息稅前利潤率，甚至我提到的下半年的某種增值來看，就你的觀點而言，這與收益相關，但即使我們的概況也普遍是輕資本的。因此，這也可以無縫地轉化為現金流。

So, maybe to synthesize all of that is the combination we will have to integrate. There will be synergy opportunities. There are cost opportunities as well, as we look across both firms that we'll be working through. But as you get into next year, certainly, we see earnings accretion, we see cash benefits and cash flow benefits.

因此，也許要綜合所有這些，我們就必須整合。將會有協同機會。當我們審視我們將要研究的兩家公司時，也存在成本機會。但當你進入明年時，我們當然會看到收益增加，我們看到現金收益和現金流收益。

And I think as you start to think through end of 2025 into 2026, you're going to see a much more scaled, still strong growth company, very healthy gross margins, software like and EBIT margins that are not at our full potential because we're going to be investing those incremental dollars in our growth opportunities. But certainly shortly thereafter, I think you could think of us as that 30%-plus EBIT margin type profile business.

我認為，當你開始考慮從2025 年底到2026 年時，你將看到一家規模更大、增長依然強勁的公司，毛利率非常健康，軟體等利潤率和息稅前利潤率尚未充分發揮我們的潛力，因為我們將把這些增量資金投資於我們的成長機會。但不久之後，我認為您可以將我們視為息稅前利潤率超過 30% 的企業。

All right. Thank you.

好的。謝謝。

Thank you.

謝謝。

Dan Ives, Wedbush Securities.

丹‧艾夫斯，韋德布希證券。

(technical difficulty) and great quarter. Can you just talk about how conversations with prospective customers have changed, let's say, over the last three, six months compared to even a year ago? Can you just maybe anecdotally talk about that, just given where everything is going from a technology perspective, new verticals? And I think the view of SoundHound, right, is obviously changing dramatically in the market. Thanks.

（技術難度）和偉大的季度。您能否談談過去三、六個月與一年前相比，與潛在客戶的對話發生了怎樣的變化？考慮到從技術角度來看一切都在發展，新的垂直領域，您能否以軼事方式談論這個問題？我認為 SoundHound 的觀點顯然在市場上正在發生巨大的變化。謝謝。

Yeah. So, in pillar one, where we power like automotive and devices, the big change is that they are willing to pay more for generative AI, whereas we have 20 years of history here, and there's always pressure to -- constant pressure to lower their costs. But we see it -- for the first time, we are seeing that when we say, hey, if you want to upgrade to the SoundHound Chat AI, which brings generative AI, there's additional royalty that you have to pay, and they're willing to pay it. So that's the anecdotal answer to the pillar one question.

是的。因此，在第一支柱領域，也就是我們為汽車和設備提供動力的領域，最大的變化是他們願意為生成式人工智慧支付更多費用，而我們在這裡已有20 年的歷史，並且始終面臨著降低成本的壓力。但我們第一次看到，當我們說，嘿，如果你想升級到 SoundHound Chat AI（它帶來了生成式 AI）時，你必須支付額外的版稅，而且它們願意付錢。這就是第一支柱問題的軼事答案。

In pillar two, the big changes that are for AI customer service, brands are coming to us. We used to go to them, we used to knock on their door, and we used to getting a meeting to pitch our value proposition was a big win, but now we actually have to calibrate how to handle all the incoming, inbound demand. And they all want to move faster. They all want to be first. They want to go from pilot to production. They want to make sure we can scale with them. And that's a much better challenge for us to deal with compared to just getting meetings from them.

在第二支柱中，人工智慧客戶服務、品牌正在發生巨大變化。我們過去常常去找他們，敲他們的門，過去召開會議來推銷我們的價值主張是一個巨大的勝利，但現在我們實際上必須調整如何處理所有傳入的需求。他們都希望行動更快。他們都想成為第一名。他們希望從試點轉向生產。他們希望確保我們能夠與他們一起擴展。與僅僅從他們那裡獲得會議相比，這對我們來說是一個更好的挑戰。

Okay. And then just like a follow-up, I mean, kind of like Gil asked, but even to take that, does it really feel like just given the momentum you're seeing, now is the time to do a deal like this?

好的。然後就像後續行動一樣，我的意思是，有點像吉爾問的那樣，但即便如此，考慮到你所看到的勢頭，現在真的是時候做這樣的交易了嗎？

Yeah, I'll take that one. Yeah, we think it's a great time to do a deal. I mean, I think, first of all, we're seeing our technology can permeate into different ecosystems. And we built the core proprietary tech over many, many years, and we're seeing it live in action and getting a lot of traction across when we extend it from autos into restaurants. And really now bringing in Amelia into the fold does a few different things, some of which we've highlighted in our press release, but there's really a lot more here. It's a diversification of industry. It's really skills and integration. They have a great ecosystem of channel partners, by the way, which we can leverage across other avenues of our work. And there's a great intersection of product synthesis. So, when you look at other products that we've been deploying around our Smart Answering or Employee Assist, there's a great synergy that we could bring into their ecosystem as well.

是的，我會接受那個。是的，我們認為現在是達成協議的好時機。我的意思是，我認為，首先，我們看到我們的技術可以滲透到不同的生態系統中。我們花了很多很多年的時間建立了核心專有技術，當我們將其從汽車擴展到餐廳時，我們看到它正在發揮作用並獲得了巨大的吸引力。實際上，現在將阿米莉亞納入其中會做一些不同的事情，其中​​一些我們在新聞稿中強調了，但這裡確實還有更多。這是產業的多元化。這確實是技能和整合。順便說一句，他們擁有一個龐大的通路合作夥伴生態系統，我們可以在其他工作途徑中加以利用。產品合成有很大的交叉點。因此，當您查看我們圍繞智慧應答或員工協助部署的其他產品時，您會發現我們也可以將其帶入他們的生態系統中。

So, when we look at things again, I kind of laid out in the prepared remarks, the framework when we think of inorganic versus organic opportunities. When we see the market momentum, ultimately, to your first question, what are customers seeing, they're really thirsting for solutions. It's not just buzz out there. It's like how do you utilize this technology to help their customers and to help them grow. It's not only productivity, it's actually about generating new revenue. We see that with restaurants, for example. It's not only about productivity. Obviously, they have workers in store that are overworked and strained, and freeing up their resources is one thing, but we see consistent improvements in upsell, and automation never shies away from asking for that large drink or that extra French Fries. And those types of things are actually revenue and really meaningful ticket items for a customer.

因此，當我們再次審視事物時，我在準備好的評論中列出了我們思考無機機會與有機機會時的框架。當我們看到市場勢頭時，最終，對於你的第一個問題，客戶看到了什麼，他們真的渴望解決方案。這不僅僅是那裡的嗡嗡聲。就像你如何利用這項技術來幫助他們的客戶並幫助他們成長。這不僅僅是生產力，實際上是創造新的收入。例如，我們在餐廳就看到了這一點。這不僅僅是生產力的問題。顯然，他們店裡的工人過度勞累和緊張，釋放他們的資源是一回事，但我們看到追加銷售的持續改善，而且自動化從不迴避要求大杯飲料或額外的炸薯條。這些類型的東西實際上是收入，對客戶來說是真正有意義的門票項目。

So, I think we're seeing those demands. We think, yes, totally cognizant of -- as I mentioned in prepared remarks, that anything meaningful, there's integration effort and so forth, but I really -- I think the way we look at it is over the long-term, when we look at the -- sort of the calibration of risks and opportunities, this is a time to be aggressive and this is the time to be thoughtful, but definitely to be in go mode, because we're hearing it directly from the customer. So, I think, the combination with Amelia is something we're very excited about.

所以，我認為我們正在看到這些需求。我們認為，是的，完全認識到——正如我在準備好的發言中提到的那樣，任何有意義的事情，都有整合工作等等，但我真的——我認為我們看待它的方式是長期的，當我們看看風險和機會的校準，這是一個積極進取的時刻，也是一個深思熟慮的時刻，但絕對要處於前進模式，因為我們直接從客戶那裡聽到了這一點。所以，我認為，與阿米莉亞的結合是我們非常興奮的事情。

Great. Thanks.

偉大的。謝謝。

Mike Latimore, Northland Capital Markets.

麥克‧拉蒂摩爾 (Mike Latimore)，北國資本市場。

Great, thanks. Yeah, congrats on all the developments here. Looks great. The query volume growth was 90% and last quarter it was 60% year over year. What caused that acceleration?

太好了，謝謝。是的，祝賀這裡的所有發展。看起來很棒。查詢量增加了 90%，上季年增了 60%。是什麼導致了這種加速？

Yeah, a lot of it is automotive partners that upgraded to SoundHound Chat AI. We did mention that when you upgrade to Chat AI, because of the generative AI feature, the usage went up. So, consumers are actually interacting with the assistant a lot more. In some pilots, it was an order of magnitude. So that's one. And also just scaling in pillar two, having more customer service customers.

是的，其中許多是升級到 SoundHound Chat AI 的汽車合作夥伴。我們確實提到，當你升級到 Chat AI 時，由於生成式 AI 功能，使用率上升了。因此，消費者實際上與助手的互動更多了。在一些飛行員中，這是一個數量級。這就是其中之一。而且只是擴大第二支柱，擁有更多的客戶服務客戶。

Got it. Great. And then, on Amelia, can you talk a little bit about the core technology here? Is it that they have a kind of a platform that can handle orchestration, integration, data security, develop agents on that, and then they can bring in your tech, or maybe just talk a little bit about kind of what the core elements of their platform is?

知道了。偉大的。然後，關於Amelia，您能談談這裡的核心技術嗎？他們是否擁有一種可以處理編排、整合、資料安全、開發代理的平台，然後他們可以引入你的技術，或者只是談論他們的核心要素是什麼？

Yeah. So, they have productized customer service somewhat omnichannel. So, it supports text and voice, phone and chatbots for both user-facing and employee-facing. And there is a lot of synergies on using our tech to power that.

是的。因此，他們將全通路的客戶服務產品化。因此，它支援面向用戶和麵向員工的文字和語音、電話和聊天機器人。使用我們的技術來推動這一點可以產生許多協同效應。

For example, for speech recognition, they're using third-party APIs. We would replace that with ours. There's opportunity for improving accuracy and also cost savings. There was a cloud migration for them to bring their cloud to our cloud, another cost-saving opportunity. And just the way AI works, we think we can improve a lot of the user experiences, but it's not just a complete replacement.

例如，對於語音識別，他們使用第三方 API。我們將用我們的替換它。有機會提高準確性並節省成本。他們進行了雲端遷移，將他們的雲端遷移到我們的雲，這是另一個節省成本的機會。正如人工智慧的工作方式一樣，我們認為我們可以改善許多用戶體驗，但它不僅僅是完全替代。

They also have done a lot of innovation over 26 years. So, there's an opportunity to take the best of both. We saw that also with SYNQ3. When we bought them, we thought, let's go and look at the best of both and create something better and we've done exactly that.

26 年來他們也做了很多創新。因此，我們有機會充分利用兩者的優點。我們在 SYNQ3 中也看到了這一點。當我們購買它們時，我們想，讓我們去看看兩者中最好的，並創造出更好的東西，我們確實做到了這一點。

Yeah. Excellent. Great. Best of luck.

是的。出色的。偉大的。祝你好運。

Thanks, Mike.

謝謝，麥克。

Scott Buck, H.C. Wainwright.

巴克 (Scott Buck)，H.C.溫賴特。

Hi. Good afternoon, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. First. I'm just curious, with the closing of Amelia, do you now have all the tools in the toolbox necessary to complete the three-pillar strategy and do it successfully?

你好。下午好，夥計們。感謝您回答我的問題。第一的。我只是好奇，隨著阿米莉亞的關閉，您現在是否擁有完成三支柱策略並成功實施所需的所有工具？

Well, we've had the tools, we just needed the scale and we reached a point where we thought we had that scale earlier this year. We are now in millions of cars and double-digit thousand locations in pillar two. So just connecting them together seemed like at the right time. We also have national coverage of certain brands, like Chipotle, for example, and the acquisition of Allset earlier is going to accelerate the integration.

好吧，我們已經有了工具，我們只需要規模，我們在今年早些時候就達到了我們認為已經達到的規模。我們現在擁有數百萬輛汽車和數千個位於第二支柱的地點。因此，將它們連接在一起似乎是在正確的時間。我們也對某些品牌進行了全國覆蓋，例如Chipotle，而先前收購Allset將加速整合。

Now we just need to do the integration of bringing those pillar two customers into pillar one products. And with Amelia, we just massively increased our scale in pillar two. So, going from double-digit thousand locations, mostly in restaurants, now we are in almost 200 large enterprise brands in new verticals for us. So, we are in retail now, we are in hospitality, we are in financial services, insurance and healthcare.

現在我們只需要進行整合，將第二支柱客戶引入第一支柱產品。透過阿米莉亞，我們剛剛大幅擴大了第二支柱的規模。因此，從數千家門市（主要是餐廳）發展到現在，我們在新垂直領域擁有近 200 個大型企業品牌。所以，我們現在涉足零售業、旅館業、金融服務、保險和醫療保健領域。

Okay. So, there are no holes in tech that you still need to fill, it's now just about accelerating the scaling?

好的。那麼，技術上沒有任何漏洞需要填補，現在只是加速擴充？

Absolutely.

絕對地。

Yeah. Okay, perfect. That's helpful. And then, you've had some nice wins and then obviously some big opportunities out in front of you. I'm curious, from an implementation capacity standpoint, whether or not you need to go through a process of significant hiring or between your own team and the team you're bringing on through Amelia, you have the -- I guess, the hands on deck to meet that demand.

是的。好的，完美。這很有幫助。然後，你已經取得了一些不錯的勝利，顯然還有一些重大機會擺在你面前。我很好奇，從實施能力的角度來看，無論你是否需要經歷一個重要的招募過程，或者在你自己的團隊和你透過阿米莉亞引入的團隊之間進行，你都有——我想，手甲板上以滿足此需求。

Go ahead.

前進。

Yeah, I'll jump in. I think we're in a good spot. We have been steadily hiring in pockets where we've needed it to accelerate. I think overall we've been in a good spot where attrition has been low and we have -- our talent who's really passionate about what they're driving, and sometimes they do need additional resources or scaling with customers. So, there has been measured hiring, and we -- I think we know in pockets where if we see an opportunity to go faster, we don't -- I think we talked about this maybe a quarter or two ago, like, we don't want a customer waiting for six months, so we really want to get the resources to be able to start to activate.

是的，我會跳進去。我認為我們處於一個很好的位置。我們一直在需要加速的地方穩定招募。我認為總的來說，我們一直處於一個很好的位置，人員流失率很低，而且我們的人才對他們所推動的事情充滿熱情，有時他們確實需要額外的資源或與客戶一起擴展。因此，我們已經進行了有針對性的招聘，而且我們——我想我們知道，如果我們看到有機會加快步伐，我們不會——我想我們可能在一兩個季度前討論過這個問題，就像，我們我們不希望客戶等待六個月，因此我們確實希望獲得能夠開始啟動的資源。

But I'd say generally no major holes. But because there's growth, there's going to be some hiring to support that. And then, I'll also add that, again, across the company, there's synergy opportunities both on revenue upsell and cross-sell, and leveraging that omnichannel opportunity where they bring to the table to amplify our voice capabilities. And I think there's just some overhead things that naturally there's going to be cost synergies. So that's the work that we're kicking off, really earnestly. But to your point on -- or maybe the prior -- like from a tech stack, no major holes. From a product capabilities, no major holes. From a resourcing, no major holes. But when you're growing, you're constantly expanding and you're kind of adding too as you go, and that's kind of what we're always mindful of to make sure that we have what we need to grow.

但我想說一般來說沒有大漏洞。但因為有成長，就會有一些招募來支持這項成長。然後，我還要補充一點，在整個公司範圍內，在收入追加銷售和交叉銷售方面都存在協同機會，並利用他們帶來的全通路機會來增強我們的語音能力。我認為只有一些管理費用自然會產生成本綜效。這就是我們正在認真開始的工作。但就你的觀點而言——或者可能是先前的觀點——就像技術堆疊一樣，沒有重大漏洞。從產品能力來看，沒有什麼大漏洞。從資源來看，沒有重大漏洞。但當你成長時，你會不斷擴張，並且在成長過程中也會有所增加，這就是我們始終牢記的，以確保我們擁有成長所需的東西。

Yeah, that's helpful, guys. I appreciate the added color. That's it for me.

是的，這很有幫助，夥計們。我很欣賞添加的顏色。對我來說就是這樣。

Thank you.

謝謝。

Great, thank you.

太好了，謝謝。

Brett Knoblauch, Cantor Fitzgerald.

布雷特·諾布勞赫，坎托·菲茨杰拉德。

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question. Congrats on the acquisition. I guess just kind of digging a bit deeper there. I think in your prepared remarks, you guys talked about there being some slower-growth, lower-margin businesses, and probably in the flip side, some higher-growth, higher-margin businesses.

嘿，夥計們。感謝您提出我的問題。祝賀收購。我想只是在那裡挖得更深一些。我認為在你們準備好的發言中，你們談到了一些成長較慢、利潤率較低的業務，而另一方面，可能還有一些成長較高、利潤率較高的業務。

Could you just maybe provide a framework for what that business is growing at? And additionally, walk us through why they sold for, call it, $80 million with expectations to do $45 million in revenue? It seems like a phenomenal purchase price for you guys, but I guess, why the sellers agreed to that? I guess they just not have in them anymore? I guess, you just talk about how that process happen as well?

您能否為該業務的成長提供一個框架？另外，請告訴我們為什麼他們以 8000 萬美元的價格出售，並期望獲得 4500 萬美元的收入？對你們來說，這似乎是一個驚人的購買價格，但我想，為什麼賣家會同意呢？我想他們已經不再有了嗎？我想，你也只是談論了這個過程是如何發生的？

Well, yes.

嗯，是的。

Yeah. Thanks, Brett. I'll say a couple of things. First, again, more details to come. We'll see a lot more around the breakout and the details of the financial profile. The 8-K that we filed this morning on the transaction, actually walk through the deal economics. So, maybe I'll just start there.

是的。謝謝，布雷特。我會說幾件事。首先，更多細節即將到來。我們將看到更多有關突破和財務狀況細節的資訊。我們今天早上提交的關於交易的 8-K 實際上概述了交易的經濟學。所以，也許我就從這裡開始。

So, there actually were multiple components. So, there was sort of an upfront piece, some cash, some stock. There was also a part of assumption of debt, and we paid back part of that debt that was announced concurrently. And then, like we've done in prior acquisitions, we like to share in the economics over time with delivery against the milestones and expectations that we're setting in concurrence with the target. And so, all those parts are there. I think $80 million is probably just a partial view, just to be clear. So, there is, again, some debt components and other things and some earnouts.

所以，實際上有多個組件。所以，有一些預付款，一些現金，一些股票。還有一部分債務承擔，我們同時償還了部分債務。然後，就像我們在先前的收購中所做的那樣，我們希望隨著時間的推移分享經濟效益，並根據我們設定的與目標一致的里程碑和期望來交付。所以，所有這些部分都在那裡。需要澄清的是，我認為 8000 萬美元可能只是片面觀點。因此，再次存在一些債務成分和其他因素以及一些收益。

But we do -- I think maybe the essence of what your question is, is value. And certainly, both parties need to say there's alignment of value for any deal to make sense. And we've been going through that with them. And part of it is when you do stock transactions, there needs to be an attribution to future value of that stock. And there's a real belief both sides of what we can become and what we're starting to become. So, I think, when you unpack all that from deal economics, that's why this transaction was successful, why we got it to this place.

但我們確實——我認為也許你問題的本質是價值。當然，雙方都需要表明任何交易都具有價值一致性才有意義。我們一直在和他們一起經歷這個過程。其中一部分是當你進行股票交易時，需要對該股票的未來價值進行歸因。對於我們能夠成為什麼以及我們即將成為什麼，雙方都抱持著真正的信念。所以，我認為，當你從交易經濟學中解開所有這些時，這就是為什麼這筆交易是成功的，為什麼我們能走到這個地方。

Then the other question was sort of an unpacking of the various pieces of the business. So, we did articulate in the press release about the $45 million of ARR. They do have a strong recurring business that has been, over time, shifting from a licensing model. And so, that transition has happened. And so, that's a really -- that's what we valued really. It was a growing ARR business across those industries we talked about earlier, really rich set of customers, too-big-to-fail banks and those types. So, people that -- it would take us a long time to really develop a system to support. And so, we're very, very excited about that.

接下來的另一個問題是對業務的各個部分進行分析。因此，我們在新聞稿中明確闡述了 4500 萬美元的 ARR。他們確實擁有強大的經常性業務，隨著時間的推移，這種業務已經從許可模式轉變。所以，這種轉變已經發生了。所以，這確實是我們真正重視的。這是我們之前討論過的那些行業中不斷成長的 ARR 業務，真正豐富的客戶群、大而不能倒的銀行以及這些類型。所以，人們認為──我們需要很長時間才能真正發展出一個支持系統。因此，我們對此非常非常興奮。

But they do have other pieces. They have professional services. A lot of the deals they've had are complicated. There's implementation, customization services, and those can be very valuable. They tend to be a little lower margin. And so, that's a little bit of what we were alluding to. And then, they also have this piece of the business that's more call center-like. Think of it maybe in -- I forget what's that -- escalation support type capabilities and those are partners that we work with and revenue that they generate that is lower-margin business. And we do openly need to dive in and understand contract-by-contract, what makes sense?

但他們確實還有其他作品。他們有專業的服務。他們達成的許多交易都很複雜。還有實施、客製化服務，這些服務非常有價值。他們的利潤率往往較低一些。這就是我們剛才提到的一點內容。然後，他們還有這塊更像呼叫中心的業務。想想可能是——我忘了​​那是什麼——升級支援類型的能力，這些是我們合作的合作夥伴，他們產生的收入是利潤率較低的業務。我們確實需要公開地深入研究並理解每個合同，什麼是有意義的？

In Gil's question earlier I talked about what sort of profile business we're building. We're really happy as a AI-centric, next-generation technology software provider that, from my seat goes like, hey, 70%-plus gross margin, 30% EBIT margins at scale, bits and bytes that can transition and scale very quickly. But when we need to provide services to support integration environments, we'll provide that. When there are, like we had with SYNQ3, some call center capabilities that are additive, and by the way, appropriately measured with the customer where there's data that we can utilize to enhance the models and enhance the technology, we'll leverage that.

在吉爾之前的問題中，我談到了我們正在建立什麼樣的檔案業務。作為一家以人工智慧為中心的下一代技術軟體供應商，我們真的很高興，從我的座位上看，毛利率超過70%，息稅前利潤率達到30%，比特和位元組可以非常靈活地轉換和擴展。但是，當我們需要提供服務來支援整合環境時，我們就會提供。當有一些呼叫中心功能時，就像我們在 SYNQ3 中所做的那樣，順便說一句，與客戶進行適當的測量，我們可以利用這些數據來增強模型和增強技術，我們將利用它。

So, yeah, there are different pieces of business, different growth rates, and we're going to calibrate and we're just getting going. So, again, more details to come. So, stay tuned.

所以，是的，有不同的業務，不同的成長率，我們將進行調整，我們才剛開始。因此，更多細節即將到來。所以，請繼續關注。

Perfect. Thank you. That was very helpful. I think you guys also talked about how you like having the optionality to kind of go back and forth between different models that you're integrated with, whether it be Perplexity or ChatGPT. I just want to know from the cost side on, from your point of view, I guess, how are they billing you? Is that a usage model? Is it a one-time setup fee? I guess, how should we think about that dynamic?

完美的。謝謝。這非常有幫助。我想你們也談到了你們如何喜歡在整合的不同模型之間來回切換，無論是 Perplexity 還是 ChatGPT。我只是想知道從成本方面來看，從你的角度來看，我猜他們是如何向你收費的？這是一種使用模式嗎？是一次性安裝費嗎？我想，我們該如何看待這種動態？

Yeah. So, something we predicted before there were even multiple models was that -- and this is more than a year ago, but that there will be multiple models. They will be good at different things and some will be cheaper, some will be more expensive, and some will be owned and made by us, some will be open source. So, we built an infrastructure to be able to tap into different models, arbitrate, choose the right one, and even for a single interaction, sometimes we go to multiple models at the same time. And that is working. It's seamless. The user experience is amazing. They don't need to worry about where it's coming from. They just get the right answer. And then, it follows them as they ask different questions and so on.

是的。因此，我們在存在多個模型之前就預測過，這是一年多前的事，但將會有多個模型。他們會擅長不同的事情，有些會更便宜，有些會更貴，有些將由我們擁有和製造，有些將是開源的。因此，我們建立了一個基礎設施，以便能夠利用不同的模型、進行仲裁、選擇正確的模型，甚至對於單次交互，有時我們也會同時使用多個模型。這正在發揮作用。這是無縫的。用戶體驗是驚人的。他們不需要擔心它來自哪裡。他們只是得到了正確的答案。然後，當他們提出不同的問題時，它就會跟著他們。

Now, in terms of billing it's -- again, some of these are models that we host, so the cost is mainly hosting. And for the APIs like OpenAI and others, you can sign up for enterprise accounts to bring the cost down and get more scale with them. That's something that we are doing. And then, there are companies like Perplexity that have list prices, and then we have an arrangement with them that we can go to them when it scales to, for example, rev share arrangements or lower prices at scale. So, we future-proof that for that, but it's too early to go into specifics of it.

現在，就計費而言，其中一些是我們託管的模型，因此成本主要是託管。對於 OpenAI 等 API，您可以註冊企業帳戶以降低成本並擴大規模。這就是我們正在做的事情。然後，像 Perplexity 這樣的公司有標價，然後我們與他們達成了一項協議，當規模擴大到例如收益份額安排或大規模降低價格時，我們可以去找他們。因此，我們對此進行了前瞻性的驗證，但現在討論具體細節還為時過早。

Perfect. Thank you. Really appreciate it. Congrats on transactions again, guys.

完美的。謝謝。真的很感激。再次恭喜交易成功，夥計們。

Thank you.

謝謝。

Thanks, Brett.

謝謝，布雷特。

Glenn Mattson, Ladenburg Thalmann.

格倫馬特森，拉登堡塔爾曼。

Hi. Thanks for taking the question. Building on that last question a little bit with expected new release of ChatGPT, maybe can you just talk about how you plan ahead for something like that? And maybe there's obviously opportunities, but perhaps is there any risks associated with maybe they could come out with some functionality that could potentially be competitive on the very low end or something like that?

你好。感謝您提出問題。在最後一個問題的基礎上，結合預期的 ChatGPT 新版本，也許您可以談談您如何提前規劃類似的事情嗎？也許顯然存在機會，但也許存在任何風險，因為他們可能會推出一些可能在極低端或類似產品上具有競爭力的功能？

So anyway, just generally speaking, managing the evolution of this process, as well as maybe you can hit on other factors of the competitive landscape when you talk about this, just in general, whether it be pillar one or pillar two?

所以無論如何，一般來說，管理這個過程的演變，以及當你談論這個時，也許你可以觸及競爭格局的其他因素，一般來說，無論是第一支柱還是第二支柱？

Yeah. So, in terms of advancements by OpenAI and other similar companies, we position ourselves so that as they do better, it benefits us as opposed to it harming us. So, we are able to use whatever they put out that is good. And if some of those overlap with something that we already have, we don't hesitate to integrate it because our goal is to deliver really, really good user experiences.

是的。因此，就 OpenAI 和其他類似公司的進步而言，我們對自己的定位是，當他們做得更好時，它會為我們帶來好處，而不是傷害我們。因此，我們可以使用他們提供的任何好的東西。如果其中一些內容與我們已有的內容重疊，我們會毫不猶豫地將其集成，因為我們的目標是提供真正非常好的用戶體驗。

And that was one of the advantages of SoundHound when the big tech players were kind of disoriented for more than a year, oh, let's go build our own. We're never going to use OpenAI APIs. We did it in two days and that really benefited us. We were the first to go live with our customers and we were the first AI assistant that integrated generative AI and so on. So, we love it when they come up with something that is good because say, hey, we can make our products better.

這就是 SoundHound 的優勢之一，當時大型科技公司在一年多的時間裡都迷失了方向，哦，讓我們去建立我們自己的。我們永遠不會使用 OpenAI API。我們在兩天內就完成了，這確實讓我們受益匪淺。我們是第一個與客戶一起上線的公司，也是第一個整合生成式人工智慧等的人工智慧助理。所以，當他們想出一些好的東西時，我們會很高興，因為我們可以讓我們的產品變得更好。

I don't think they are going after our customers, because it takes a lot of integration, a lot of handholding and a lot of support to -- it's not just a model. We have to integrate. For example, in restaurants, we have to integrate with POS systems and we have to integrate their menu. We have to understand their needs. In automotive, it's integrated with the head units and the navigation software in the car, the car control features. And that's -- those integrations even OpenAI probably so they are not going to go after those. They're becoming a platform to enable companies like ours. And the advantage for us is that we have a lot of core technologies to augment what they have to really enable things that other companies are waiting for something to become available, we already have that, so we can go faster.

我不認為他們會追求我們的客戶，因為這需要大量的整合、大量的指導和大量的支援——這不僅僅是一個模型。我們必須整合。例如，在餐館，我們必須與 POS 系統集成，我們必須整合他們的菜單。我們必須了解他們的需求。在汽車領域，它與汽車主機和導航軟體以及汽車控制功能整合。那就是——這些整合甚至可能是 OpenAI，所以他們不會追求這些。它們正在成為支持像我們這樣的公司的平台。對我們來說，優勢在於我們擁有許多核心技術來增強他們所擁有的技術，從而真正實現其他公司正在等待的東西，我們已經擁有了這些技術，所以我們可以走得更快。

I think I answered your question, but --

我想我回答了你的問題，但是--

Yeah. No, it was. Just beyond that, possibly the competitive landscape, if there's been any changes, possibly even down to pillar one or just across the board in terms of the traditional competitors? Thanks.

是的。不，是的。除此之外，可能是競爭格局，是否有任何變化，甚至可能下降到第一支柱，或者就傳統競爭對手而言是全面的？謝謝。

Yeah, I'll jump in a bit. So, I think -- so pillar one, it was really kind of the same group, and we've been gaining traction, we've been gaining brands, and we feel great. That's a primary comment around automotive. Broader than automotive and the other devices that we operate in, we've had a great position and we continue to gain traction there.

是的，我會跳一點。所以，我認為——第一支柱，這實際上是同一個團隊，我們一直在獲得關注，我們一直在獲得品牌，我們感覺很棒。這是有關汽車的主要評論。比汽車和我們經營的其他設備更廣泛，我們擁有很好的地位，並且我們繼續在該領域獲得吸引力。

Within pillar two, it's a hot area. There are people coming and I would say people who are -- who don't have the technology to compete, who are struggling. And we really have felt this way. We've seen it. I think what we're seeing from customer traction is that we are still -- and we say this very humbly because things change in a heartbeat in tech land, we are step-function above others in terms of technology, capability and the solutions that we have. And frankly, the package of solutions that we have from drive-thru, phone ordering, Employee Assist solution and beyond.

在第二支柱內，這是一個熱門區域。有人來了，我想說的是，他們沒有技術來競爭，正在苦苦掙扎。我們也確實有過這樣的感覺。我們已經看到了。我認為我們從客戶的吸引力中看到的是，我們仍然如此——我們非常謙虛地這麼說，因為科技領域的事情瞬息萬變，我們在技術、能力和解決方案方面領先於其他人。坦白說，我們擁有從得來速、電話訂購、員工協助解決方案等在內的一攬子解決方案。

We're moving heavily beyond just at point site, but into in-app into text, et cetera. And there's a ton of engagement that we have the full portfolio of solutions. So, we really think we got a running start on the restaurant side, but yeah, it's a very, very attractive market and it's maybe one of the most sort of logical use cases of AI. So, I think we're going to continue to see entrants. We look at that as a good thing. It's a sign of a healthy market. But again, we feel like we've got a really strong position and really wouldn't trade our spot with anybody else.

我們正在大力超越僅在點站點，而是進入應用程式內文字等領域。我們擁有完整的解決方案組合，有大量的參與。所以，我們真的認為我們在餐廳方面已經有了一個良好的開端，但是，是的，這是一個非常非常有吸引力的市場，它可能是人工智慧最合乎邏輯的用例之一。因此，我認為我們將繼續看到新的參與者。我們認為這是一件好事。這是市場健康的標誌。但我們再次感覺到我們擁有非常強大的地位，並且真的不會與其他任何人交換我們的位置。

Great. Thanks for that color, Nitesh and Keyvan. Thanks.

偉大的。感謝 Nitesh 和 Keyvan 提供的顏色。謝謝。

Great, thank you.

太好了，謝謝。

Leo Carpio, Joseph Gunnar.

裡奧·卡皮奧，約瑟夫·岡納爾。

Good afternoon, gentlemen. First, congratulations on the deal and on the quarter. Just want to dive a little bit further into Amelia. In terms of the deal, can you just talk us through in terms of who approached who for this transaction? How did you became aware of Amelia?

下午好，先生們。首先，恭喜這筆交易和本季的業績。只是想更深入地了解阿米莉亞。就交易而言，您能簡單介紹一下誰與誰接洽了這筆交易嗎？您是如何認識阿米莉亞的？

And then, looking forward, post Amelia, what other verticals you may be interested in? Thinking here, being that as you explore voice AI and develop the capabilities, you may discover second, third, derivative technologies that may be of interest to you that could bolster your platforming capabilities?

然後，展望未來，在阿米莉亞之後，您可能會對哪些其他垂直領域感興趣？在這裡思考，當您探索語音人工智慧並開發功能時，您可能會發現您可能感興趣的第二、第三、衍生技術，這些技術可以增強您的平台能力？

Sure. Yeah. I mean, I'll start maybe with the framework I laid out in the prepared remarks. Like, first of all, we think that having, or at least being open to the idea of having programmatic M&A and being aware of who the players are, from partnership perspective, to Glenn's question and from a competitive perspective. So, being aware of what's going on in the marketplace is just our -- it's just part of who we are. So, we're always aware. We've known of Amelia. They've been doing some great things for a long time. And you can imagine in the space, particularly in the AI space, over the last, I guess it's 18, 20 months now, a lot of bankers come out with ideas.

當然。是的。我的意思是，我可能會從我在準備好的評論中列出的框架開始。首先，我們認為，或至少對進行程序性併購的想法持開放態度，並從合作夥伴的角度、格倫的問題和競爭的角度了解參與者是誰。因此，了解市場上正在發生的事情是我們的職責，也是我們的一部分。所以，我們始終保持清醒的認知。我們都知道阿米莉亞。他們長期以來一直在做一些偉大的事情。你可以想像在這個領域，特別是在人工智慧領域，在過去，我想現在已經是 18、20 個月了，很多銀行家都提出了想法。

And so, we've had interactions and there's dialogue around partnerships and we were heavily kind of going in our verticals. And as Keyvan noted, you got to start with the sort of overarching vision. We believe we are here to voice enable the world with conversational intelligence. We think that there's a migration happening omnichannel, in essence. And it's going to permeate across all industries. So, the end all period at the end of the sentence wasn't always, okay, we're in restaurants, done. We're in autos, done. It was always to sort of, as Keyvan noted, kind of evolve from our origin industries into beyond. So, the question then is like, well, when and how and with whom or doing it organically? And those are iteration comments that were -- or conversations we're constantly working through.

因此，我們圍繞著合作夥伴關係進行了互動和對話，並且我們在垂直領域進行了大量的工作。正如凱萬所指出的，你必須從整體願景開始。我們相信，我們的使命是透過對話智能為世界提供語音支援。我們認為本質上正在發生全通路遷移。它將滲透到所有行業。所以，句子末尾的所有句號並不總是，好吧，我們在餐廳裡，完成了。我們在汽車裡，完成了。正如基萬所指出的那樣，它總是從我們的原始產業發展到更廣闊的領域。那麼，接下來的問題是，何時、如何、與誰或有機地進行？這些是我們不斷進行的迭代評論或對話。

So, in this case, yeah, we connected. We started to explore, we just get to know, and then it sort of moved from there. And every -- I don't want to go into details on their situation and what they were motivated by, but ultimately kind of landed in, hey, is there potential for a combination, and then, you have to explore the complexities of deals, which these things don't happen in short order. They definitely are a long journey of due diligence, and getting to know one another to understand the cultures and could there potentially be a fit. And so, we've been going on that for several months and sort of landed where we were.

所以，在這種情況下，是的，我們聯繫了。我們開始探索，我們只是了解，然後事情就從那裡開始了。我不想詳細介紹他們的情況和他們的動機，但最終會陷入，嘿，是否有可能進行組合，然後，你必須探索交易的複雜性，這些事情不會在短時間內發生。這絕對是一段漫長的盡職調查之旅，需要相互了解，了解文化，並尋找可能的契合點。因此，我們已經這樣做了幾個月，並達到了我們現在的目標。

And then, I think maybe just to hit the other part in terms of, is this -- I think your question was like, industries, is that the right set? I'll try to address it this way that humans have been interacting through voice and conversation forever, and our technology is kind of chasing that play. And we do think we're at the precipice of where human interactions and with technology in all manifestations can happen through natural conversations. And there will be great places where the touch, type, swipe is the best medium, but there will be more and more opportunities where conversations and using your voice will be the best medium.

然後，我想也許只是為了打擊另一部分，我認為你的問題是，行業，這是正確的設定嗎？我將嘗試這樣解決這個問題：人類一直透過語音和對話進行互動，而我們的技術正在追趕這種玩法。我們確實認為，我們正處於人類互動和各種形式的技術可以透過自然對話進行的邊緣。在很多地方，觸摸、打字、滑動是最好的媒介，但也會有越來越多的機會，對話和使用你的聲音將成為最好的媒介。

So, I don't think there's a boundary on like this industry, that industry, it's really about journeys and consumer journeys. So, again, makes sense for if you're driving in your car, you want to pick up coffee, great, well, there's a connection. Makes sense when you're just at the drive-thru and you want to order your food. And it makes sense if you're driving, you want to set some appointments or book travel or so forth. Like, there's so many interactions, and so, it's -- we're just getting started here. We think this is the right action for us now. And so, we're excited to embark upon the journey with Amelia and continue on the journey that we've been driving for the past many years.

所以，我認為這個行業、那個行業沒有界限，它實際上是關於旅程和消費者旅程的。所以，如果你開車，你想喝杯咖啡，這也是有道理的，很好，嗯，這是有連結的。當您剛到汽車餐廳並想點餐時，這是有意義的。如果您正在開車、想要安排一些約會或預訂旅行等，那麼這是有意義的。就像，有這麼多的互動，所以，我們才剛開始。我們認為現在這對我們來說是正確的行動。因此，我們很高興能與阿米莉亞一起踏上這段旅程，並繼續我們過去多年來一直在推動的旅程。

Okay. And then, a quick follow-up question on the restaurant side. The tentative conversations, have they switched from one where your marketing team is proactively reaching out to potential customers, or are they now flipping in terms of coming their inbound calls to you?

好的。然後是餐廳方面的快速跟進問題。試探性的對話，他們是否從你的行銷團隊主動接觸潛在客戶的方式轉變，或者他們現在是否轉向向你打電話？

Yeah, we commented for the last couple quarters, there really has been a pretty significant shift towards the latter, where originally, call it, 15 months, 20 months ago, we were really on the outreach side. I think your question was predominantly for restaurants, if I'm not mistaken. So that certainly in that industry, it has -- we're working through making sure that there isn't too much of a wait because we're working through integrations with some major QSRs, as Keyvan noted, trying to make sure we're serving all our customers equally with excellence.

是的，我們在過去幾個季度發表了評論，確實發生了向後者的重大轉變，最初，15 個月、20 個月前，我們確實處於外展方面。如果我沒記錯的話，我認為你的問題主要是針對餐廳的。因此，在這個行業中，我們正在努力確保不會有太多的等待，因為我們正在與一些主要的 QSR 進行整合，正如 Keyvan 指出的那樣，試圖確保我們「我們平等地為所有客戶提供卓越的服務。

And so, we're not working with everybody. So, there's still more conversations to be had. But we're going out to conferences. We're getting leads. We're talking to people. Some of those conversations take place over time. The other thing that these are virtuous cycles. If you can do well, in one instance, the word gets around pretty quickly. And also in a lot of these franchises that we're working with now, it's not just like a brand to a brand, but it's you work with a corporate and then it gets down to the franchise level. And some franchisees have a big number of dozens and dozens of locations, and some of them have hundreds of locations.

因此，我們並沒有與所有人合作。因此，還有更多對話需要進行。但我們要去參加會議。我們正在獲得線索。我們正在與人交談。其中一些對話是隨著時間的推移而發生的。另一件事是，這些都是良性循環。如果你能做得很好，在某種情況下，這個詞很快就會傳開。而且在我們現在合作的許多特許經營中，這不僅僅是一個品牌對一個品牌，而是你與一家公司合作，然後深入到特許經營層面。而有的加盟商數量多，有幾十個、幾十個，有的有上百個。

So again, it has really moved towards a respond to, but that doesn't mean we're going to slow down on our outreach. And we didn't really, I think, talked a lot about just beyond the restaurants and the Smart Answering capabilities. Last time we talked about in the fitness space with Planet Fitness. There's a lot going on, on that side, too, beyond just restaurants, that we're getting a lot of traction. And so, just excited to keep going forward. And as long as we deliver great products, we think the customers will come.

再說一次，它確實已經朝著回應的方向發展，但這並不意味著我們會放慢我們的外展工作。我認為，除了餐廳和智慧應答功能之外，我們並沒有真正談論太多。上次我們與 Planet Fitness 討論了健身領域。除了餐廳之外，在這方面也發生了很多事情，我們受到了極大的關注。因此，我很高興繼續前進。只要我們提供優質的產品，我們相信客戶就會來。

Okay, well, congratulations on the quarter.

好吧，恭喜這個季度。

Thank you very much.

非常感謝。

There are no further questions at this time. So, this now concludes today's call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect.

目前沒有其他問題。那麼，今天的電話會議到此結束。感謝您的加入。您現在可以斷開連線。