SoundHound AI Inc (SOUN) 2025 Q1 法說會逐字稿

Good day and thank you for standing by, and welcome to the SoundHound first-quarter 2025 earnings conference call. (Operator Instructions) Please be advised that today's conference is being record.

大家好，感謝您的支持，歡迎參加 SoundHound 2025 年第一季財報電話會議。（操作員指示）請注意，今天的會議正在被記錄。

I will now hand the conference over to your speaker today, Scott Smith, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

現在我將會議交給今天的發言人、投資者關係主管斯科特史密斯 (Scott Smith)。請繼續。

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining our first-quarter 2025 conference call. With me today is our CEO, Keyvan Mohajer.; and our CFO, Nitesh Sharan.

下午好，感謝您參加我們的 2025 年第一季電話會議。今天和我一起的是我們的執行長 Keyvan Mohajer。以及我們的財務長 Nitesh Sharan。

We'll begin with some short remarks before moving to Q&A. We'd also like to remind everyone that we'll be making forward-looking statements on this call. 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.

在進入問答環節之前，我們將先進行一些簡短的發言。我們也想提醒大家，我們將在本次電話會議上做出前瞻性陳述。實際結果可能與我們的前瞻性陳述所暗示的結果有重大差異。請參閱我們向美國證券交易委員會提交的文件，以詳細了解可能影響我們業務的風險和不確定性，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.

此外，我們可能會討論某些非公認會計準則指標。請參閱今天的新聞稿，以了解更詳細的財務結果以及有關這些指標的定義、限制和用途以及從 GAAP 到非 GAAP 的調整的更多詳細資訊。

Also note that the forward-looking statements on this call are based on information available to us as of today's date. We undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statements except as required by law.

另請注意，本次電話會議中的前瞻性陳述是基於我們截至今天所掌握的資訊。除法律要求外，我們不承擔更新任何前瞻性聲明的義務。

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完整的音訊網路直播。今天的電話會議結束後將提供音訊重播。

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

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

Thank you, Scott, and thank you to everyone for joining the call today. SoundHound has another strong quarter in Q1 with over $29 million in revenue, representing an increase of over 151% year over year. Our bold moves with product investments and growth initiatives in 2024 are paying dividends.

謝謝你，斯科特，也謝謝大家今天參加電話會議。SoundHound 在第一季再次表現強勁，營收超過 2,900 萬美元，較去年同期成長超過 151%。我們在 2024 年採取的大膽產品投資和成長計畫正在帶來回報。

We've been investing in Polaris, our multi-modal, multi-lingual foundation model, and it has proven to be a real differentiator against our closest peers. We are seeing that our average latency per query is as much as 4 times better.

我們一直在投資 Polaris，這是我們的多模式、多語言基礎模型，事實證明它是我們與最接近的同行之間的真正區別。我們發現每個查詢的平均延遲提高了 4 倍。

In noisy environments, we excel and are consistently finding that our sentence accuracy is around twice as good in those environments. Our word error rate is up to 35 % better, and we have almost 30 languages in a mature state, which is not only ahead of others but significantly decreases any barriers to expand internationally, in particular with our customer service solutions.

在吵雜的環境中，我們表現出色，並且不斷發現我們的句子準確率在這些環境中大約提高了兩倍。我們的單字錯誤率最高降低了 35%，我們擁有近 30 種成熟語言，這不僅領先於其他語言，而且大大降低了國際擴張的障礙，特別是我們的客戶服務解決方案。

Our growth initiatives in 2024 are taking shape. We acquired Synq3 with the objective of introducing innovative and advanced technology to the restaurant partners and customers and driving business expansion beyond that.

我們的 2024 年成長計畫正在成形。我們收購 Synq3 的目的是向餐廳合作夥伴和顧客推出創新和先進的技術，並推動業務擴展。

With Amelia, we similarly saw lots of synergies and huge opportunity. And within less than three quarters, we are seeing outside growth across a portfolio that has now integrated with SoundHound voice AI technology, generating excitement from our enterprise customers and delivering on the promise of the upsell and cross-sell opportunities we identified as part of the acquisition. And then look at Allset, where the team has been tasked with bringing AI voice commerce to the market, and they're already making great strides in building technology that is attracting interest from huge global brands.

有了 Amelia，我們同樣看到了許多協同效應和巨大的機會。在不到三個季度的時間裡，我們看到了已與 SoundHound 語音 AI 技術整合的產品組合的外部成長，這激發了我們企業客戶的興奮，並兌現了我們在收購中確定的追加銷售和交叉銷售機會的承諾。再看看 Allset，其團隊的任務是將 AI 語音商務推向市場，並且他們在建立吸引全球大型品牌興趣的技術方面已經取得了長足的進步。

To give more precise examples of our success harvesting the synergies we achieved, our first acquisition in 2024, Synq3, has already upgraded the majority of its locations to our Polaris model. We have been able to grow their locations by over 30% and upsell SoundHound products to their growing customer base.

為了更精確地說明我們成功實現的綜效，我們在 2024 年首次收購的公司 Synq3 已經將大部分門市升級到我們的 Polaris 模式。我們已經能夠將其門市數量擴大 30% 以上，並向其不斷增長的客戶群推銷 SoundHound 產品。

Our second acquisition, Allset, is bringing the growing merchant locations and brands to the automotive customers that we have accumulated over the past decade to create the largest voice commerce ecosystem of its kind, allowing drivers to transact and order food while driving. And our latest Amelia acquisition is upgrading to Polaris, just launched a new agent AI platform, is entering new industries, and is already upselling its solutions to our merchant customers.

我們的第二次收購是 Allset，它將不斷增長的商家位置和品牌帶給我們過去十年積累的汽車客戶，從而創建同類最大的語音商務生態系統，讓駕駛員可以在開車時進行交易和訂餐。我們最新收購的 Amelia 正在升級到 Polaris，剛剛推出了一個新的代理 AI 平台，正在進入新的行業，並且已經向我們的商家客戶推銷其解決方案。

We cannot be more thrilled. Our strategy is working. Many environmental factors and developments in the technology landscape are also playing to our favor right now. A recent report from Stanford University highlighted a number of these trends.

我們非常激動。我們的策略正在發揮作用。目前，許多環境因素和技術領域的發展也對我們有利。史丹佛大學最近的一份報告強調了這些趨勢。

AI performance continues to improve exponentially, creating opportunities for solution builders like us. Systems are also becoming more affordable and accessible, whether that's hardware costs or improvements in energy efficiency. The cost of adoption is being driven further down. At the same time, enterprise investment is rapidly on the rise, with no business wishing to be left behind the pace of change. And to meet this enthusiasm, we are seeing more use cases move from the lab to real life right across industries.

人工智慧的性能持續呈指數級提升，為我們這樣的解決方案建構者創造了機會。系統也變得越來越便宜和易於使用，無論是硬體成本還是能源效率的提高。收養成本正在進一步下降。與此同時，企業投資正在快速成長，沒有任何一家企業願意落後於變革的步伐。為了滿足這種熱情，我們看到越來越多的用例從實驗室走向各行業的現實生活。

Closer to home, we've also made a number of observations from our own specific standpoint. Selective buyers and users are driving disruptive trends, many of which are creating more strong tailwinds for SoundHound. I would like to touch on four of these key trends.

更貼近現實的是，我們也從自己的特定立場出發，提出了一些觀察。選擇性買家和用戶正在推動顛覆性趨勢，其中許多趨勢為 SoundHound 創造了更強勁的順風。我想談談其中的四個主要趨勢。

First, in automotive, we are seeing a notable shift away from OEMs partnering with big tech platforms for their in-vehicle voice offerings. Over recent months, we've been in discussions with a number of automators who have proactively approached us looking for a partner like SoundHound to help them differentiate and innovate and replace their big tech solutions.

首先，在汽車領域，我們看到汽車原始設備製造商 (OEM) 不再與大型科技平台合作提供車載語音服務。最近幾個月，我們一直在與一些自動化廠商進行討論，他們主動與我們接洽，尋求像 SoundHound 這樣的合作夥伴來幫助他們實現差異化、創新並取代他們的大型技術解決方案。

Second, in restaurants and hospitality, we are seeing a similar kind of movement. Operators are looking to migrate from cumbersome legacy answering systems to AI ordering solutions in order to future proof their businesses.

其次，在餐飲和旅館業，我們也看到了類似的動向。營運商正在尋求從繁瑣的傳統應答系統遷移到 AI 訂購解決方案，以確保其業務的未來發展。

Third, clearer momentum is growing around the idea of voice commerce. Notably, consumers are showing a strong appetite for this new convenient modality and the technology is ready to deliver. A new ecosystem of technology providers is rising to meet that demand, and of course, SoundHound is already out in front with our groundbreaking voice commerce ecosystem.

第三，語音商務的動能越來越明顯。值得注意的是，消費者對這種新的便捷方式表現出強烈的興趣，相關技術也已準備好實現這一目標。一個新的技術供應商生態系統正在興起以滿足這一需求，當然，SoundHound 已經憑藉我們突破性的語音商務生態系統走在了前列。

And lastly, the quality of voice AI technology is a true differentiator for customer service AI agents. While the hype around Agentic AI persists, marrying sophisticated AI agents with next-generation voice technology is having the net effect of upending the traditional IVR space. Now customers can speak and actually be heard.

最後，語音 AI 技術的品質是客戶服務 AI 代理的真正區別因素。儘管圍繞 Agentic AI 的炒作仍在繼續，但將複雜的 AI 代理與下一代語音技術相結合，正在產生顛覆傳統 IVR 領域的淨效應。現在顧客可以說話並且能夠被聽到。

We consider ourselves the best positioned vendor to benefit from these trends. And given this context, it's unsurprising that our pipeline is the largest it's ever been and our TAM continues to expand, giving us confidence that we have a massive opportunity to significantly grow our business for years to come.

我們認為自己是最能從這些趨勢中獲益的供應商。有鑑於此，我們的產品線達到有史以來的最大規模，並且我們的 TAM 持續擴大，這並不令人意外，這讓我們有信心在未來幾年內擁有巨大的機會大幅增長我們的業務。

Of course, one of the most significant waves of fresh AI-driven disruption comes from Agentic AI. Just this morning, we sent out a press release with the exciting details of the latest version of our Amelia AI platform, Amelia 7.0. The platform is powered by a proprietary multi-process agentic framework, branded Agentic Plus, which allows businesses to deploy fleets of AI agents capable of understanding, reasoning, and completing actions.

當然，人工智慧驅動的最具影響力的新一波顛覆浪潮之一來自 Agentic AI。就在今天早上，我們發布了一份新聞稿，其中包含有關我們 Amelia AI 平台最新版本 Amelia 7.0 的令人興奮的細節。該平台由專有的多進程代理框架（品牌為 Agentic Plus）提供支持，該框架允許企業部署能夠理解、推理和完成操作的 AI 代理群。

These AI agents can orchestrate amongst each other and perform tasks entirely autonomously without the need for human intervention. As a complete AI agent platform, Amelia gives businesses access to a whole range of agents that can retrieve and provide information, complete tasks and procedures, and allow consumers and external parties to complete commercial transactions with the business.

這些人工智慧代理可以相互協調並完全自主地執行任務，而無需人工幹預。作為一個完整的AI代理平台，Amelia為企業提供了一系列代理，可以檢索和提供資訊、完成任務和程序，並允許消費者和外部各方與企業完成商業交易。

Our AI agents use a combination of deterministic and large language models, giving the best of both worlds with control and flexibility. The platform also allows for optional human escalation and intervention for peace of mind. It is also fully interoperable with a whole range of available integrations.

我們的人工智慧代理結合使用確定性語言模型和大型語言模型，兼具控制力和靈活性。該平台還允許可選的人工升級和乾預，以讓您安心。它還可以與一系列可用的整合完全互通。

Notably, we also believe this is the only agent platform to equip enterprise-ready autonomous agents with world-class voice AI, enabling these smart AI agents to reason and perform complex tasks with human-like interactions thanks to our incredible advanced speech recognition. This means that our AI agents are not only fast, intelligent, and labor-saving; they engage in a way that employees and consumers will actively prefer.

值得注意的是，我們還相信這是唯一一個為企業級自主代理配備世界一流語音 AI 的代理平台，借助我們令人難以置信的先進語音識別技術，這些智能 AI 代理能夠以類似人類的交互方式推理和執行複雜任務。這意味著我們的AI代理不僅速度快、聰明、省力；他們以員工和消費者積極喜歡的方式參與。

Imagine calling your doctor, reordering your prescription of a hard-to-pronounce medication, paying for a recent visit, and making a new appointment. This is all done beyond agents that effortlessly understand what you're saying, thanks to our advanced voice AI, and orchestrating with a network of further sub-agents to instantly schedule, reorder, and complete a billing transaction.

想像一下，您給醫生打電話，重新開立一份難以發音的藥物處方，支付最近的就診費用，並進行新的預約。這一切都是在代理可以輕鬆理解您所說的內容的情況下完成的，這要歸功於我們先進的語音 AI，並且與進一步的子代理網絡協作，可以立即安排、重新排序和完成計費交易。

While others continue to talk about the promise of Agentic AI, we are walking the walk and already delivering it in the real world. This is underscored by the trust our customers put in us and our solutions.

當其他人還在繼續談論 Agentic AI 的前景時，我們已經付諸行動，並在現實世界中實現了它。這充分體現了客戶對我們和我們的解決方案的信任。

Let me now share some of the great customer wins, renewals, and expansions in Q1. In restaurants, in Q1 we scaled and reached thousands of locations with a large pizza chain that we signed just last year, providing our answering and ordering solutions to ensure no inbound customer calls goes unanswered. Further locations were also added with existing brands, including Habit Burger, Casey's, Bar House Subs, Five Guys, White Castle, and McAllister among others.

現在讓我分享一下第一季贏得的一些重要客戶、續約和擴張的情況。在餐廳領域，我們在第一季擴大了規模，與去年簽約的一家大型披薩連鎖店達成了數千家門市的合作，並提供接聽和訂購解決方案，以確保所有來電客戶都能得到接聽。也增加了現有品牌的更多門市，包括 Habit Burger、Casey's、Bar House Subs、Five Guys、White Castle 和 McAllister 等。

We also continue to expand across Burger King UK locations together with Acrelec, a global technology company that is reinventing the customer experience with some of the biggest brands in the world. In automotive, we joined forces with Tencent Intelligent Mobility, part of the cloud and smart industries group at the multinational conglomerate Tencent to bring world-class conversational AI to the intelligent cockpits of global auto brands.

我們也將繼續與 Acrelec 合作，以擴大英國漢堡王門市的規模。 Acrelec 是一家全球性科技公司，正在為世界上一些最大的品牌重塑客戶體驗。在汽車領域，我們與跨國集團騰訊旗下雲端與智慧產業事業部旗下的騰訊智慧移動攜手合作，將世界一流的對話式人工智慧帶入全球汽車品牌的智慧駕駛艙。

Also, multiple OEMs now are running pilots and POCs with our voice commerce solution. I will talk about this in more detail later on.

此外，目前有多家 OEM 正在使用我們的語音商務解決方案進行試點和 POC。我稍後會更詳細地談論這一點。

In healthcare, three highly regarded companies in the healthcare space chose to renew and expand with us again this quarter. This included a prominent medical billing company, a healthcare provider that brings test results to patients at home, and a healthcare provider in the Midwest that owns and operates a dozen hospitals. These customer validations prove that our technology is adding value to our customers, and it also shows that our business is sustainable and recurring.

在醫療保健領域，本季有三家備受推崇的公司選擇再次與我們續約和擴張。其中包括一家著名的醫療帳單公司、一家為患者提供家庭檢測結果的醫療保健提供者，以及一家擁有並經營十幾家醫院的中西部醫療保健提供者。這些客戶的驗證證明我們的技術正在為客戶增加價值，同時也表明我們的業務是可持續的和重複性的。

Additionally, we are pleased to note that three of the new deals we won in Q4 have already gone live with our solutions. In retail, we signed to launch exciting strategic pilots with multiple top US fitness chains, unlocking potential for over 15,000 locations. We are also hoping to expand market reach through new pilot agreements and ongoing discussions with leading home services franchises, positioning SoundHound's smart answering as a transformative solution for multi-unit operations.

此外，我們很高興地註意到，我們在第四季度贏得的三筆新交易已經採用我們的解決方案。在零售業，我們與美國多家頂級健身連鎖店簽約啟動令人興奮的策略試點項目，釋放了超過 15,000 家門市的潛力。我們還希望透過新的試點協議和與領先的家庭服務特許經營商的持續討論來擴大市場範圍，將 SoundHound 的智慧應答定位為多單元營運的變革性解決方案。

In energy, we have now launched a new AI agent with the large utilities company we signed in Q4 last year, helping them to transform the customer experience. Furthermore, we've been forging new strategic partnerships to expand our reach into this space. Just last week, we announced that we are joining forces with PowerConnect.AI, a purpose-built AI platform for the energy and utility industry to launch a new era of intelligent omni-channel voice experiences designed specifically for this vertical.

在能源領域，我們現在與去年第四季簽約的大型公用事業公司推出了新的人工智慧代理，幫助他們改變客戶體驗。此外，我們一直在建立新的策略合作夥伴關係，以擴大我們在該領域的影響力。就在上週，我們宣布與 PowerConnect.AI（一個專門為能源和公用事業行業構建的人工智慧平台）合作，開啟專為該垂直行業設計的智慧全通路語音體驗的新時代。

In information technology, we renewed with a large multi-national conglomerate based out of Tokyo, offering a number of services in various industries and another large Tokyo-based company that offers IT services, system integration, cloud computing, and information security.

在資訊科技領域，我們與一家總部位於東京的大型跨國企業集團進行了合作，該集團為各個行業提供多項服務，此外還與另一家總部位於東京的大型公司進行了合作，該公司提供 IT 服務、系統整合、雲端運算和資訊安全。

In telecom, we had an exciting renewal this quarter with a large British multi-national telecommunications company helping to power its employee IT support desk with our best-in-class AI agents.

在電信領域，本季我們與一家大型英國跨國電信公司進行了令人興奮的合作，利用我們一流的 AI 代理為其員工 IT 支援台提供支援。

In travel and hospitality, we signed a new deal with a leading resort developer in Latin America, offering concierge for inbound and outreach services, creating repeatable business across some of the largest hotel brands in the world. We also expanded with one of the largest hotel chains in the world, offering full-service hotels and resorts.

在旅遊和酒店業，我們與拉丁美洲一家領先的度假村開發商簽署了一項新協議，提供入境和出境禮賓服務，為世界上一些最大的酒店品牌創造可重複的業務。我們也與世界上最大的連鎖飯店之一合作，提供全方位服務的飯店和度假村。

In financial services, we have continued to have strong traction with some of the largest financial services companies in the world, including the win with one of the world's largest insurance companies in Europe and significant renewals and expansions for our employee experience solutions across four financial institutions in Q1. As a reminder, we currently work with 7 of the 10 largest global financial institutions.

在金融服務領域，我們繼續與世界上一些最大的金融服務公司保持著密切的合作，包括與歐洲世界上最大的保險公司之一的合作，以及第一季在四家金融機構中對我們的員工體驗解決方案的重大更新和擴展。提醒一下，我們目前與全球 10 家最大金融機構中的 7 家合作。

Together with channel partners, we had wins including with a well-known global agriculture OEM, a global tax preparation company, and a North American travel and hospitality company focused on all-inclusive vacation and resort management. Additionally, we expanded services with a large systems integrator and renewed with a Japan-based multi-national IT and services corporation that resale our solution to their clients and managed services offering.

我們與通路合作夥伴一起取得了成功，包括與一家知名的全球農業 OEM、一家全球稅務規劃公司以及一家專注於全包式度假和度假村管理的北美旅遊和酒店公司的合作。此外，我們還與一家大型系統整合商擴展了服務，並與一家日本跨國 IT 和服務公司續簽了協議，該公司將我們的解決方案轉售給他們的客戶並提供託管服務。

Now let me update you on our voice commerce solution, which opens up a brand-new commercial channel for consumers and businesses and delivers on the promise of transactional voice AI that has never been executed before.

現在，讓我向您介紹我們的語音商務解決方案，它為消費者和企業開闢了一個全新的商業管道，並兌現了以前從未實現過的交易語音人工智慧的承諾。

Our voice commerce initiative is strategically designed to leverage our existing restaurant and merchants together with our OEM networks to unlock new revenue opportunities within our established ecosystem. By enabling seamless voice-powered transactions, like ordering food while driving. We not only enhance the business outcomes for our partners, but also create additional revenue streams for SoundHound while providing additional convenience to the consumer.

我們的語音商務計畫的策略目的是利用我們現有的餐廳和商家以及我們的 OEM 網路在我們現有的生態系統中釋放新的收入機會。透過實現無縫語音交易，例如開車時訂餐。我們不僅為合作夥伴提升業務成果，也為 SoundHound 創造額外的收入來源，同時為消費者提供更多便利。

Moreover, our unique positioning is enabling us to expand voice commerce to OEMs outside of our existing network and also beyond food ordering to services like table reservations, hotel booking, and prepaid parking. This expansion fuels consumer adoption, which in turn attracts more OEMs and merchants, reinforcing the flywheel effect and driving growth across our royalty and subscription businesses. We unveiled this solution at CES earlier this year and gained massive interest from OEMs and restaurants.

此外，我們獨特的定位使我們能夠將語音商務擴展到現有網路之外的 OEM，並將其擴展到食品訂購之外，包括餐桌預訂、飯店預訂和預付停車等服務。這種擴張促進了消費者的採用，進而吸引了更多的原始設備製造商和商家，強化了飛輪效應並推動了我們的版稅和訂閱業務的成長。我們在今年稍早的 CES 上發布了該解決方案，並引起了 OEM 和餐廳的極大興趣。

We also continued the momentum at NVIDIA GTC 2025, where we once again showcased the power of voice AI commerce and its transactional capabilities.

我們也在 NVIDIA GTC 2025 上延續了這一勢頭，再次展示了語音 AI 商務的強大功能及其交易能力。

Last quarter, we talked about the many interested OEMs pursuing POCs with our voice commerce solution. And I'm happy to report that we are working with the innovation team within some of the largest automakers in the world to bring our vision to life. Indeed, we've never seen OEMs move so fast for a product.

上個季度，我們談到了許多有興趣的 OEM 利用我們的語音商務解決方案進行 POC。我很高興地告訴大家，我們正在與世界上一些最大的汽車製造商的創新團隊合作，將我們的願景變為現實。確實，我們從未見過 OEM 對一款產品的行動如此之快。

We also already have over 15 large restaurant chains plugged into our network. And aside from the interest from OEMs and restaurants, we also already have partners signed up for reservations and parking services.

我們的網路也已連接超過 15 家大型連鎖餐廳。除了原始設備製造商和餐廳的興趣之外，我們還已經有合作夥伴簽約預訂和停車服務。

Another very promising development that could help us monetize voice commerce in the near term is the interest we are seeing from larger technology platforms that don't want to manage restaurant relationships directly themselves but want our voice solution available to their users as a safe, convenient hands-free option when ordering food from their vehicles or devices.

另一個非常有前景的發展可以幫助我們在短期內實現語音商務貨幣化，那就是我們看到大型技術平台的興趣，這些平台不想直接管理餐廳關係，但希望我們的語音解決方案可供用戶使用，作為一種安全、方便的免提選項，讓他們可以從車輛或設備訂購食物。

So as you can see, in just a short period of time, we have seen some very promising opportunities with voice commerce and we're excited to explore more opportunities that this ecosystem is quickly creating.

正如您所看到的，在短短的時間內，我們已經看到了語音商務的一些非常有前景的機會，我們很高興探索這個生態系統正在快速創造的更多機會。

In closing, it's becoming increasingly clear that the trends we are starting to see play out with Voice AI are creating the right conditions for our business to take advantage and thrive. Whether it's voice-enabled Agentic AI, our new voice commerce solution, or our Polaris multi-lingual foundation model, we are clearly at the forefront of this generational shift in technology.

最後，越來越明顯的是，我們開始看到的語音人工智慧趨勢正在為我們的業務創造有利條件並蓬勃發展。無論是支援語音的 Agentic AI、我們的新語音商務解決方案，還是我們的 Polaris 多語言基礎模型，我們都明顯處於這一代技術轉變的前沿。

Existing enterprise brands are renewing with us at a high rate, and OEMs and restaurant brands are approaching us at an equally high pace. Our three-pillar strategy is resonating with all businesses, and we are starting to see the integration of Amelia turn to amazing cross and upsell opportunities.

現有的企業品牌正以很高的速度與我們更新換代，OEM廠商和餐飲品牌也以同樣高的速度與我們接洽。我們的三大支柱策略與所有企業產生了共鳴，我們開始看到 Amelia 的整合轉變為令人驚嘆的交叉銷售和追加銷售機會。

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

說完這些，我現在將電話轉給 Nitesh，讓他談談我們的財務表現、關鍵成長動力和業務前景。

Thank you, Keyvan, and good afternoon, everyone. Q1 revenue was $29.1 million, increasing 151% year over year. Each quarter is a passing mile marker, and our pace is increasing at every turn, even when the road may get jagged.

謝謝你，Keyvan，大家下午好。第一季營收為 2,910 萬美元，年增 151%。每個季度都是一個經過的英里標記，即使道路崎嶇不平，我們的步伐也在不斷加快。

Innovation and disruption in our industry is not showing any signs of slowdown, and at Soundhound, we continue to pioneer new breakthroughs. Inference cost reductions and comprehensive model choice that we orchestrate and arbitrate, enable us to build new Agentic and voice AI solutions using best of breed to deliver better outcomes for our customers. And that builds even more customer interest in what we offer.

我們行業的創新和顛覆並沒有顯示出任何放緩的跡象，在 Soundhound，我們繼續開拓新的突破。我們精心策劃和仲裁的推理成本降低和全面的模型選擇使我們能夠使用最佳技術建立新的 Agentic 和語音 AI 解決方案，為我們的客戶提供更好的結果。這會讓顧客對我們提供的產品產生更大的興趣。

Our technological differentiation, breadth of coverage and capabilities, and scalable infrastructure positions us well for continued share capture. Our Q1 was heavy on enterprise momentum across financial services, healthcare, and hospitality.

我們的技術差異化、廣泛的覆蓋範圍和能力以及可擴展的基礎設施使我們有能力繼續佔領市場份額。我們第一季在金融服務、醫療保健和酒店業等領域的企業發展勢頭強勁。

We also gained substantial velocity within the restaurant business. In fact, this was the first quarter where we activated more than 1,000 new live restaurant locations in a single quarter. That pace is roughly tenfold of what we were seeing slightly more than a year ago. And we are also gaining continued traction with our new generative AI, Agentic, and voice commerce platforms.

我們的餐飲業務也取得了顯著的發展速度。事實上，這是我們首次在一個季度內開設超過 1,000 家新餐廳。這一速度大約是一年多前速度的十倍。我們的新生成 AI、Agentic 和語音商務平台也不斷獲得關注。

Customer traction continues to be demonstrated with our bookings metric growing sequentially and at a high double-digit rate versus prior year. That said, given the quarter-to-quarter volatility, we plan to update this metric only at year end going forward. To give you more flavor of underlying usage momentum of our solutions, let me lay out a few details.

我們的預訂量指標連續成長，並且與去年相比實現了兩位數的高成長，證明了客戶吸引力的持續增強。也就是說，考慮到季度間的波動，我們計劃僅在年底更新此指標。為了讓您更了解我們解決方案的潛在使用勢頭，讓我列出一些細節。

Within our product pillar, we continue to see strong 50%-plus growth in our active cloud users. And as a reminder, we also sell Edge and hybrid offerings, so this only partially reflects what we are delivering for customers. The number of active restaurants using our voice AI ordering solutions is nearing 13,000 locations and now handling approximately 10 million interactions a quarter, extending our market leadership position.

在我們的產品支柱內，我們的活躍雲端用戶持續保持 50% 以上的強勁成長。提醒一下，我們也銷售 Edge 和混合產品，因此這僅部分反映了我們為客戶提供的服務。使用我們的語音 AI 訂餐解決方案的活躍餐廳數量已接近 13,000 家，目前每季處理約 1000 萬次互動，擴大了我們的市場領導地位。

Enterprise KPIs showed a substantial boost in Q1. We added tens of millions of interactions on a monthly basis for enterprises. We handled a 5x increase in ticket volume versus the prior quarter and reduced our average resolution time almost 50-fold because our automation rates increased nearly 50%.

企業KPI在第一季大幅提升。我們每月為企業增加數千萬次互動。與上一季相比，我們處理的票量增加了 5 倍，並且由於我們的自動化率提高了近 50%，我們的平均解決時間減少了近 50 倍。

Queries into our voice AI engine overall continued to accelerate. We now have over 2 billion queries in less than a quarter. Not much more than two years ago, that was an annual run rate for us. All of this simply demonstrates the continued traction of momentum. And to be clear, we know we are just scratching the surface of the massive opportunity in front of us.

我們的語音 AI 引擎的查詢總體上繼續加速。現在，不到一個季度的時間，我們就有超過 20 億次查詢。就在兩年多前，這還是我們的年運行率。所有這些都表明了持續的動力。需要明確的是，我們知道我們才剛剛觸及眼前巨大機會的表面。

With that, let me now discuss the first-quarter financials in more detail. Q1 revenue was $29.1 million, up 150% year over year. The revenue base continues to meaningfully diversify, with no single customer contributing more than 10% of our revenue in the quarter. This is much improved from historical levels, provides overall risk mitigation, and reflects our expanded serviceable markets.

現在，讓我更詳細地討論一下第一季的財務狀況。第一季營收為 2,910 萬美元，年增 150%。收入基礎持續顯著多樣化，本季沒有任何一個客戶貢獻超過我們收入的 10%。這比歷史水準有了很大的改善，提供了整體風險緩解，並反映了我們擴大的服務市場。

We are seeing strong year-over-year growth in our customer service offerings, in particular, driven by location expansion in restaurants and scaling across the enterprise business. We continue to see an increase in auto ASPs driven by our generative AI solutions and deeper product penetration. That said, we did see pressure in auto units this quarter as the automotive space navigates complex geopolitical dynamics.

我們的客戶服務產品年增強勁，特別是受到餐廳門市擴張和企業業務擴展的推動。在我們的生成式人工智慧解決方案和更深層的產品滲透的推動下，我們繼續看到汽車平均售價的成長。儘管如此，由於汽車領域面臨複雜的地緣政治動態，本季我們確實看到汽車部門面臨壓力。

We have a strong pipeline of new OEMs, and they, along with the restaurants, are very excited about our voice commerce solution. It's still early days for this third pillar of our business, but we are optimistic with what we are seeing.

我們擁有強大的新 OEM 管道，他們和餐廳都對我們的語音商務解決方案感到非常興奮。我們的業務的第三大支柱還處於早期階段，但我們對目前的情況感到樂觀。

In Q1, our GAAP gross margin was 37%, down year over year, primarily due to the impact of the business and product mix of recent acquisitions. Adjusted for non-cash amortization of purchase intangibles and employee stock compensation, our non-GAAP gross margin was 51%.

第一季度，我們的 GAAP 毛利率為 37%，較去年同期下降，主要原因是近期收購的業務和產品組合的影響。經調整購買無形資產的非現金攤銷及員工股票薪酬後，我們的非 GAAP 毛利率為 51%。

We are starting to realize improvements from acquisition synergies and expect much more efficiency capture ahead. And we continue to mine certain low-margin acquired contracts and find ways to either improve them or exit. I expect this will likely be an 18- to 24-month process given the contract length, but we are constantly evaluating ways to accelerate.

我們開始意識到收購綜效帶來的改進，並期望未來能獲得更高的效率。我們繼續挖掘某些低利潤的已獲得合同，並尋找改善或退出的方法。考慮到合約期限，我預計這可能是一個 18 到 24 個月的過程，但我們正在不斷評估加速的方法。

R&D expenses were $24.8 million in Q1, reflecting a 66% year-over-year increase, primarily driven by our acquisitions. We increased development spend related to growth innovation and further integrated Polaris into our solution portfolio. Part of that was related to our effectiveness in accessing the underlying GPU infrastructure necessary for us to train and deploy advanced models and systems.

第一季的研發費用為 2,480 萬美元，年增 66%，主要得益於我們的收購。我們增加了與成長創新相關的開發支出，並將 Polaris 進一步整合到我們的解決方案組合中。部分原因在於我們能夠有效地存取訓練和部署進階模型和系統所需的底層 GPU 基礎設施。

We continue to deploy our state-of-the-art automatic speech recognition engine, driving cost efficiencies and performance benefits for our customers. And as I mentioned earlier, significant reductions in inference costs are allowing us to deploy our AI applications more efficiently, setting the foundation for rapid scale and adoption.

我們將繼續部署最先進的自動語音辨識引擎，為客戶提高成本效率和效能優勢。正如我之前提到的，推理成本的大幅降低使我們能夠更有效地部署人工智慧應用程序，為快速擴展和採用奠定基礎。

Sales and marketing expenses were $12 million in Q1, reflecting a 117% year-over-year increase, primarily driven by acquisitions. We increased our go-to-market investments, both direct and indirect sales. We also invested in brand marketing and demand and lead generation. We expect the net effect will be meaningful improvements in sales attainment, retention, and overall sales effectiveness over the coming quarters, and our growing pipeline and improving close rates are early indicators of progress.

第一季銷售和行銷費用為 1,200 萬美元，年增 117%，主要原因是收購。我們增加了市場投資，包括直接銷售和間接銷售。我們還投資了品牌行銷以及需求和潛在客戶開發。我們預計，未來幾季的淨效應將是銷售業績、留任率和整體銷售效率的顯著提高，而我們不斷增長的銷售管道和不斷提高的成交率是取得進展的早期指標。

G&A expenses were $18.4 million in Q1, reflecting a 79% year-over-year increase, primarily driven by our acquisitions. We continue to invest in improving our overall control environment and infrastructure, consolidating ERPs, and enhancing global processes as we scale and integrate our prior-year acquisitions.

第一季的一般及行政費用為 1,840 萬美元，年增 79%，主要由於我們的收購。在擴大和整合上一年收購業務的同時，我們將繼續投資改善整體控制環境和基礎設施、整合 ERP 並增強全球流程。

We had non-cash employee stock compensation of $17.4 million and non-cash depreciation and amortization, including the amortization of intangibles of $7.8 million in Q1, all of which are included in our GAAP results. As noted last quarter, this step-up in stock-based compensation in Q1 is the result of taking into account the full impact of the acquired employees' equity awards.

我們有 1740 萬美元的非現金員工股票薪酬以及非現金折舊和攤銷，包括第一季 780 萬美元的無形資產攤銷，所有這些都包含在我們的 GAAP 結果中。正如上個季度所指出的，第一季股票薪酬的增加是考慮到所收購員工股權獎勵的全部影響的結果。

Our Q1 financials include a gain related to the change in fair value of contingent liabilities, significantly impacting our GAAP income from operations in Q1 by approximately $176 million. Just a quick reminder, this stems from the acquisitions we have completed and is a non-operating and non-cash expense. As such, this item has been excluded in our non-GAAP results.

我們第一季的財務數據包括與或有負債公允價值變動相關的收益，這對我們第一季的 GAAP 營業收入產生了約 1.76 億美元的重大影響。簡單提醒一下，這是源自於我們已經完成的收購，是一項非經營性、非現金支出。因此，該項目已被排除在我們的非公認會計準則結果之外。

Adjusted EBITDA was a loss of $22.2 million in Q1. OI&E was $2.7 million income for the quarter. GAAP net income of $130 million and GAAP diluted EPS of $0.31 were favorably impacted by the change in fair value of contingent liabilities mentioned before. Non-GAAP net loss was $22.3 million, and non-GAAP net loss per share was $0.06 in the quarter. This adjusts for non-cash depreciation and amortization, M&A transaction costs, stock-based comp, and other non-cash items.

第一季調整後的 EBITDA 虧損 2,220 萬美元。本季 OI&E 營收為 270 萬美元。1.3 億美元的 GAAP 淨收入和 0.31 美元的 GAAP 稀釋每股收益均受到前述或有負債公允價值變動的正面影響。本季非公認會計準則淨虧損為 2,230 萬美元，每股非公認會計準則淨虧損為 0.06 美元。這根據非現金折舊和攤提、併購交易成本、股票補償和其他非現金項目進行了調整。

Our cash and equivalents at year end was $246 million with no debt. Our net cash used in operations in Q1 improved year over year by 13% to $19 million.

我們年底的現金和等價物為 2.46 億美元，沒有債務。我們第一季營運中使用的淨現金年增 13%，達到 1,900 萬美元。

With that, let me discuss our financial outlook. We are reaffirming our prior 2025 revenue guidance of $157 to $177 million. In Q1, one of our customers went through a change of control that adversely impacted our quarterly revenue by nearly $2 million versus our expectations entering the quarter. And we now see that revenue shifting to later in 2025.

接下來，讓我來討論一下我們的財務前景。我們重申先前對 2025 年收入的預測，即 1.57 億美元至 1.77 億美元。在第一季度，我們的一位客戶經歷了控制權變更，這對我們的季度收入產生了不利影響，與本季度的預期相比，季度收入減少了近 200 萬美元。我們現在看到收入將轉移到 2025 年後期。

Aside from that unique situation, the year, with some puts and takes, has started largely as expected despite overarching macrovolatility. That demonstrates the resilience of the AI momentum and our business traction.

除了這種特殊情況之外，儘管整體宏觀波動較大，但今年開局基本上符合預期，有些波動。這證明了人工智慧發展勢頭的韌性和我們業務的吸引力。

Last quarter, I mentioned that we expect first-half 2025 revenue to be greater than the historical first-half mix of roughly 30% that we have realized the last few years. In fact, we suggested it would be closer to 40%. We still believe that.

上個季度，我提到，我們預計 2025 年上半年的營收將高於過去幾年實現的約 30% 的歷史上半年收入。事實上，我們建議這個比例應該接近 40%。我們仍然相信這一點。

With the expected ramp in revenue, we also expect to reflect sequential improvement in adjusted EBITDA as we continue to move through the year. We remain committed to our path to profitability and have activated several cost actions to ensure we remain disciplined. Accordingly, we continue to expect to achieve adjusted EBITDA profitability by the end of 2025.

隨著預期營收的成長，我們也預期調整後的 EBITDA 也將在今年繼續較上季改善。我們始終致力於獲利之路，並已啟動多項成本措施以確保我們保持紀律。因此，我們仍預期在 2025 年底實現調整後的 EBITDA 獲利。

Thank you, and now we will move to Q&A.

謝謝，現在我們進入問答環節。

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

（操作員指示）Gil Luria，D.A.戴維森。

Very much appreciate that the business is now across several verticals, not just auto and restaurants. But as you look where we are now and into the rest of the year, how should we think about the levels that the first verticals are at? So how much of the business these days is coming from the restaurant vertical, from the automotive vertical versus the rest of the business?

非常感激現在業務已涉及多個垂直領域，而不僅僅是汽車和餐飲。但是當你回顧我們現在所處的位置以及今年剩餘的時間時，我們應該如何看待第一個垂直產業所處的水平？那麼，目前有多少業務來自餐飲垂直產業、汽車垂直產業，以及來自其他產業呢？

And how do you expect the growth to build into the rest of the year? Because if you just -- if you do 40% in the first half of the year, that means you're exiting the year probably closer to $50 million run rate. What are the vertical that are driving us from where we are today to that exit run rate?

您預計今年剩餘時間內的成長情況如何？因為如果你只是——如果你在上半年完成了 40%，那就意味著你在年底的營業額可能接近 5000 萬美元。哪些垂直因素推動著我們從今天的狀態達到退出運行率？

Thanks for the question, Gil. So I'll start by saying, what we saw this quarter, what we've been seeing trending for the last couple of quarters is well-balanced contribution across industries, as you noted. So we are really well split between the contribution that is from automotive, that is from restaurants, that is from financial services, that is from healthcare, that is from insurance, hospitality. So we're getting contributions across a number of verticals, all with their own unique sort of dynamics and growth opportunities.

謝謝你的提問，吉爾。因此，我首先要說的是，正如您所說，我們本季看到的情況，以及過去幾季我們看到的趨勢是各行業貢獻均衡。因此，我們很好地劃分了來自汽車、餐飲、金融服務、醫療保健、保險和酒店業的貢獻。因此，我們獲得了多個垂直領域的貢獻，每個領域都有其獨特的活力和成長機會。

So I'll unpack the two you highlighted, but I'll also hit on enterprise if that's okay. So first within auto, and I noted some of this in the prepared remarks, auto industry is going through a lot of stuff with the global supply chain dynamics. We continue to steal share, and gain and grow. And our royalty business is one that we're very optimistic about because we're very underpenetrated versus the brands that we work with.

因此，我將解開您強調的兩個問題，但如果可以的話，我也會談到企業。首先是在汽車領域，我在準備好的發言中提到了這一點，汽車產業正在經歷全球供應鏈動態的許多變化。我們繼續搶佔市場份額，不斷成長。我們對我們的特許權業務非常樂觀，因為與我們合作的品牌相比，我們的滲透率很低。

We've historically talked about 20 brands that we work with that globally comprise 20% roughly of the market share of global-like vehicle production annually, as an example. And we are, in terms of unit realization, just a small part of that 20%.

舉個例子，我們過去曾討論過與我們合作的 20 個品牌，這些品牌每年約佔全球汽車產量市場份額的 20%。而從單位實現率來看，我們只是這 20% 的一小部分。

We expect to continue to grow, and we're continuously adding new and new brands to the portfolio. In fact, last year, we talked a lot about how we're seeing outpaced gains with the EV providers and they tend to sort of operate at the speed that we're used to. Now we're getting a lot more traction also with the ICE guys.

我們期望繼續成長，並且我們正在不斷向產品組合中添加新的品牌。事實上，去年我們多次談論了我們如何看到電動車供應商的超額收益，以及他們傾向於以我們習慣的速度運作。現在我們與 ICE 夥伴的合作也越來越密切。

So really, we're bullish. And I would say that especially with our voice commerce that we announced earlier this year, there's so much conversation going on because we're providing a new pathway for revenue generation. So in moving away from us just being a subcomponent of their cost structure, the bill of materials, we're actually providing revenue opportunities.

所以，我們確實很看好。我想說，特別是我們今年稍早宣布的語音商務，引起瞭如此多的討論，因為我們為創造營收提供了一條新途徑。因此，透過使我們不再只是其成本結構（物料清單）的一個子組成部分，我們實際上提供了創收機會。

So while we did see, I'll call it relative softness, in the auto space this quarter, just given the macro uncertainty, we still are very optimistic about the pathway and a contribution that the auto business will be. What we do feel good is maybe two years ago, what was 80% of our business mix is now one of several businesses that have low double-digit kind of percentage of mix. So I think that's a real positive on the auto side.

因此，儘管我們確實看到了本季汽車領域的相對疲軟，但考慮到宏觀不確定性，我們仍然對汽車業務的發展路徑和貢獻非常樂觀。我們確實感到高興的是，也許兩年前，我們的業務組合佔 80%，而現在，我們的業務組合比例已經達到了兩位數以下。所以我認為這對汽車方面來說確實是一個利好。

Restaurant, I mean, we've been really bullish about it. There's nothing changing. In fact, if anything, I think the opportunity of building AI integrated into the restaurant operations, particularly around ordering, but even furthermore into employee productivity and other use cases, we're seeing more and more of those journeys. In fact, we're in the midst of some of the cross-sell opportunity across the enterprise solutions that we could bring into restaurants so we can go deeper into employee productivity and solutions for IT stack management, et cetera.

餐廳，我的意思是，我們對此非常樂觀。沒有任何改變。事實上，如果有什麼不同的話，我認為將人工智慧融入餐廳營運的機會，特別是在訂購方面，但更重要的是融入員工生產力和其他用例方面，我們看到越來越多的這樣的旅程。事實上，我們正​​處於一些跨企業解決方案的交叉銷售機會之中，我們可以將這些解決方案引入餐廳，以便我們能夠更深入地了解員工生產力和 IT 堆疊管理解決方案等等。

So the bigger point here is that the restaurants, we're already been really bullish in the penetration. I talked about in the prepared remarks that we're now crossing 13,000 locations. We're spanning all sorts of cuisine types, but getting really great penetration with pizza and then in drive-thrus, obviously, making a lot of traction.

因此，這裡更重要的是，我們已經非常看好餐廳的滲透率。我在準備好的發言中提到，我們現在已經跨越了 13,000 個地點。我們的菜系涵蓋了各種類型，但在披薩和免下車服務方面，我們的滲透率非常高，顯然，也取得了很大的進展。

So this is very, very early days, not even first out in the top of the first inning kind of early days of the transformation that's going to happen in restaurants. And we believe we have a really strong competitive position, differentiation, moat, and running start. So we still think that's probably one of our greater outpaced shares of growth, certainly over the medium and long term. But we also expect that to continue in the near term.

所以現在還處於非常早期的階段，甚至還不是餐飲業即將發生的轉型的第一局初期。我們相信我們擁有非常強大的競爭地位、差異化、護城河和良好的開端。因此，我們仍然認為，這可能是我們成長速度更快的份額之一，至少從中長期來看是如此。但我們也預期這種情況短期內仍將持續下去。

And then -- so I think that hits your question, Gil. But if I can add on the enterprise part, especially today, this morning, we announced our new Agentic solution 7.0. I mean, that really -- first of all, it solves many important things for many of our enterprise customers across those verticals, like financial services, healthcare, hospitality, insurance, retail.

然後——所以我認為這回答了你的問題，吉爾。但如果我可以補充企業部分，特別是今天，今天早上，我們宣布了我們的新 Agentic 解決方案 7.0。我的意思是，首先，它為我們許多垂直行業的企業客戶解決了許多重要問題，例如金融服務、醫療保健、酒店、保險、零售。

And one of the things we're most excited about is that it is very much accelerating time to value for those customers. So the speed of us, what maybe used to take us six weeks, three months to deploy a capability to increase the use cases. That's happening in weeks, days, and in some cases, hours we're finding. So our new solutions are allowing us to create more value for the customers.

最讓我們興奮的事情之一是，它大大加快了客戶的價值實現時間。因此，我們的速度很快，以前可能需要六週、三個月的時間來部署增加用例的能力。我們發現這種情況會在幾週、幾天甚至幾小時內發生。因此，我們的新解決方案使我們能夠為客戶創造更多價值。

And we know that's going to not only expand the interaction base, expand the use cases, it's going to make the containment and success measures much better. And ultimately, for the customer that's value, and for us it's more revenue. So we really see opportunity across the breadth of industry, and I think that from our perspective is great because maybe a couple years ago we were sort of dependent on one deal to get across the line for a quarter. We're definitely not in that circumstance anymore.

我們知道這不僅會擴大互動基礎、擴大用例，還會使遏制和成功措施變得更好。最終，對客戶來說這就是價值，而對我們來說這就是更多的收入。因此，我們確實看到了整個行業中存在的機遇，而且我認為從我們的角度來看，這是非常好的，因為也許幾年前，我們有點依賴一筆交易來跨越一個季度的界限。我們肯定不再處於那種情況了。

Got it. That's very helpful. Thank you. Second one is for Keyvan. On Agentic technology, it's a source of much controversy these days in terms of where we are in the maturity of that technology. A lot of technologies you're deploying for your customers are ones that you've been working on for 20 years and you refined over time.

知道了。這非常有幫助。謝謝。第二個是 Keyvan 的。關於 Agentic 技術，就該技術的成熟度而言，目前存在著許多爭議。您為客戶部署的許多技術都是您 20 年來一直致力於研究並不斷改進的技術。

Agentic AI, as far as I know, is something that we really only started doing a year ago. Are the solutions that we're talking about solutions that are we're still experimenting with customers? Are they part of a broader solution? How mature are these solutions given the technology is so new?

據我所知，我們一年前才開始研究 Agentic AI。我們正在討論的解決方案是否仍在與客戶一起試驗？它們是更廣泛解決方案的一部分嗎？鑑於這項技術如此新穎，這些解決方案有多成熟？

Great question. So if you look at our 2015 demos, we've been thinking this way for 10 years. We had demonstrations that you can look on YouTube that actually were live products that showed that Agentic behavior when you have these complex compound questions and tasks and magically performed those tasks and it was really fast and accurate.

好問題。所以如果你看一下我們 2015 年的演示，你會發現我們已經這樣思考 10 年了。我們有演示，您可以在 YouTube 上看到，這些演示實際上是實時產品，展示了當您遇到這些複雜的複合問題和任務時 Agentic 的行為，並神奇地執行了這些任務，而且非常快速和準確。

And the world is just catching up to the adoption of that vision, but we've been at it for more than 10 years because we unveiled it about 10 years ago. So the things that make us more mature in that is that we've been doing it, we pioneered a lot of it. We have a lot of those experiences live in production. And we have a ton of data, and we have -- SoundHound is one of the few companies that has devoted technical founders that Stanford dorm room are still working on things like this and that's -- our heart beats faster every time we innovate and leapfrog others.

世界才剛開始接受這個願景，但我們已經為此奮鬥了十多年，因為我們大約十年前就提出了這個願景。因此，讓我們變得更加成熟的事情是我們一直在做這件事，我們在許多方面都取得了開創性進展。我們在實際生產上累積了許多這樣的經驗。我們擁有大量的數據，而且——SoundHound 是少數幾家擁有專門的技術創始人的公司之一，這些創始人在史丹佛宿舍裡仍在研究這樣的事情——每當我們創新並超越別人時，我們的心跳就會加快。

So I agree that it's a new concept that people are talking about, but it's not new for us and that's why we think we have an advantage in terms of accuracy. It's an issue for a lot of people. Speed is another issue for a lot of people, having control over the behavior of these systems is very important because you can -- this is not about having a demo that impresses people.

因此，我同意這是人們談論的新概念，但對我們來說並不新鮮，這就是為什麼我們認為我們在準確性方面具有優勢。這是很多人關心的問題。對許多人來說，速度是另一個問題，控制這些系統的行為非常重要，因為你可以——這與給人留下深刻印象的演示無關。

This is about really being the AI of a business. So you can't be 70% right. If you're building a demo, you can be 70% right and then people forgive the rest. But if your audience is not forgiving, so we have to be closer to 100% and that's what we're really good at.

這其實就是企業的人工智慧。所以你不可能有 70% 的正確率。如果您正在建立一個演示，那麼您可能有 70% 是正確的，然後人們會原諒其餘部分。但如果觀眾不原諒，那麼我們就必須更接近 100%，而這正是我們真正擅長的。

Leo Carpio, Joseph Gunnar.

卡皮奧、約瑟夫·岡納爾。

Hi, good afternoon, gentlemen. I actually have two questions. The first question is regarding the restaurant side of business. As we're going into the year, there's uncertainty about recessions and possibly speculation situation in the economy. Could that possibly impact your restaurant business? Or is it more a case that potential recession is driving more customer interest in your technology at this point for efficiency gains?

嗨，先生們，下午好。我實際上有兩個問題。第一個問題是關於餐廳業務方面的。進入新的一年，經濟衰退和可能的投機情況仍存在不確定性。這可能會影響您的餐飲生意嗎？或者更確切地說，潛在的經濟衰退正在促使更多客戶對您的技術產生興趣，以提高效率？

Yeah, actually, it's a great question. We get support from both sides of it. So when the economy is good, people invest in innovation that brings them to us. When it's challenging, they want to invest in automation and cost saving that bring them to us. Initially, a big part of our pitch for restaurants was cost saving and quality, quality of the customer experience.

是的，實際上，這是一個很好的問題。我們得到了雙方的支持。因此，當經濟狀況良好時，人們就會投資於能為他們帶來利益的創新。當面臨挑戰時，他們希望投資自動化和成本節約，從而找到我們。最初，我們針對餐廳的宣傳重點是節省成本和提高品質以及顧客體驗的品質。

But now we are actually able to show that the ticket size we generate with AI is bigger than the ticket size that non-AI order takers generate. So we can also include in our value proposition increased revenue. And that's really important for restaurants. They want to increase their revenue, they also want to reduce costs.

但現在我們實際上能夠證明，我們使用人工智慧產生的票據規模比非人工智慧訂單接受者產生的票據規模更大。因此，我們的價值主張中還可以包括增加收入。這對於餐廳來說確實很重要。他們希望增加收入，也希望降低成本。

And so we think the value proposition is great, regardless of the macroenvironment. And sometimes one force is bigger than the other.

因此，我們認為無論宏觀環境如何，價值主張都很棒。有時，一種力量比另一種力量更大。

And then the second question is regarding the competitive environment. Have you seen any changes in the competitive landscape? Any pricing pressures? Any [competitor] has actually become more aggressive?

第二個問題是關於競爭環境。您是否發現競爭格局有任何改變？有任何定價壓力嗎？有哪位競爭對手實際上變得更具攻擊性了？

So definitely more players in the space. I mean, it used to be -- like before GenAI, us and the big tech mostly and maybe some -- a couple of smaller providers. But now we see more new companies enter the market, but they don't have the mature state that SoundHound has, in terms of technology, in terms of data, in terms of know-hows, and in terms of the customer-based integration. You're in a much more mature state.

因此該領域的參與者肯定會更多。我的意思是，在 GenAI 出現之前，主要是我們和大型科技公司，可能還有一些較小的供應商。但現在我們看到越來越多的新公司進入市場，但它們在技術、數據、專業知識和基於客戶的整合方面並不像 SoundHound 那麼成熟。你已經成熟很多了。

And a lot of the other players are creating an ecosystem that benefits us. There are some pieces of a user experience that might be necessary to complete something and other companies might provide that. So we are very open to partnering. For example, today we included in our earnings announcement a collaboration with Pindrop for authentication and security, and there are other examples of that.

許多其他參與者正在創建一個對我們有利的生態系統。使用者體驗的某些部分可能是完成某件事所必需的，而其他公司可能會提供這些部分。因此我們非常願意合作。例如，今天我們在收益公告中宣布了與 Pindrop 在身份驗證和安全方面的合作，還有其他例子。

(Operator Instructions) Mike Latimore, Northland Capital Markets.

（操作員指示）Mike Latimore，Northland Capital Markets。

Hi, this is Vijay Devar for Mike Latimore. So a couple of questions. One, how do we model the gross margin for the second quarter and for the rest of the year? And secondly, how are the retention rates within Amelia?

大家好，我是邁克·拉蒂摩爾 (Mike Latimore) 的維傑·德瓦 (Vijay Devar)。有幾個問題。第一，我們如何模擬第二季以及今年剩餘時間的毛利率？其次，Amelia 的保留率如何？

Sure. Thanks for your question. So on the first one, we're not guiding specifically gross margin, but I think I've noted in this call and prior calls that we're still in sort of the digestion of the acquisitions. And we know the business mix and contributions, particularly with relation to the call center business that we acquired and then some of the escalation support business, including also some of the professional service activities are in the near term affecting our gross margin.

當然。謝謝你的提問。因此，首先，我們並沒有具體指導毛利率，但我認為我在這次電話會議和先前的電話會議中已經指出，我們仍處於收購的消化階段。我們知道業務組合和貢獻，特別是與我們收購的呼叫中心業務相關的業務，以及一些升級支援業務，包括一些專業服務活動，都會在短期內影響我們的毛利率。

And we have been looking through certain acquired contracts to make sure that they have the right profitability composition that we want and we're actively working through. So our expectation certainly over the medium term is to revert back to those sort of pre-acquisition gross margin levels that we're crossing north of 70%. And certainly in the composition of solutions that we're delivering, whether it's Edge software capabilities or cloud services, cross industry verticals, like that's the profile of them.

我們一直在審查某些已獲得的合同，以確保它們具有我們想要的正確的盈利結構，並且我們正在積極努力。因此，我們的預期是，從中期來看，毛利率將恢復到收購前的水平，即 70% 以上。當然，在我們提供的解決方案的組成中，無論是邊緣軟體功能還是雲端服務、跨產業垂直領域，都是它們的概況。

And a lot of our current contracts that are on the lower margin and we have a journey currently we're activating with automation, so we're realizing those improvements real time. So I think as that business makes shifts, you will see a steady improvement through the year.

我們目前的許多合約利潤率較低，我們目前正在透過自動化啟動這一進程，因此我們正在即時實現這些改進。因此我認為，隨著業務的轉變，您將看到全年穩步改善。

I mentioned in the prepared remarks sequential improvement and adjusted EBITDA through the year that we expect. And I would say that's going to happen both through gross margin improvements but also we continue to look at our overall OpEx footprint and make sure we're managing that carefully and thoughtfully.

我在準備好的評論中提到了我們預計全年的連續改善和調整後的 EBITDA。我想說，這將透過提高毛利率來實現，而且我們將繼續關注我們的整體營運支出足跡，並確保我們謹慎、周到地進行管理。

So that was your first one. Sorry, can you repeat the second question?

這是你的第一個。抱歉，您能重複第二個問題嗎？

Retention rates are (multiple speakers) Amelia of this, yeah.

保留率是（多位發言者）阿米莉亞，是的。

So retention rates are -- one of the things I'd say we did post the acquisition of Amelia was -- really it was a company that under prior ownership had to do all the right things from a cost structure and really had to take a close look at a number of areas. And after we acquired them, we saw a massive opportunity in front of us.

因此，保留率是——我想說我們在收購 Amelia 後所做的事情之一——實際上，這家公司在之前的所有權下必須從成本結構上做所有正確的事情，並且必須仔細審視許多領域。收購他們之後，我們看到了眼前巨大的機會。

We have reinvested in a few pockets. In particular, one of those was our customer success capabilities and making sure that we really understood what was working, what wasn't in their customer environments. Very complicated customer environments, millions and millions of interactions and use cases and making sure we were delivering for those customers. So that team really more robustly has been up and running now for just several months. And I think they're doing a great job to kind of continue to improve retention rates.

我們已經對一些領域進行了再投資。具體來說，其中之一就是我們的客戶成功能力，並確保我們真正了解客戶環境中什麼有效、什麼無效。非常複雜的客戶環境，數以百萬計的互動和用例，並確保我們為這些客戶提供服務。因此，該團隊實際上已經更加穩健地運行了幾個月。我認為他們在繼續提高保留率方面做得很好。

And I will say that we aren't reporting the exact retention levels, but we see a real pathway to strengthen improvement in the gross retention and net retention. We are seeing a lot of -- especially with new product releases and so forth and expansion of our use cases and now with the Agentic offering.

我想說的是，我們沒有報告確切的保留率，但我們看到了加強總保留率和淨保留率改善的真正途徑。我們看到了很多——特別是新產品的發布等等，以及我們的用例的擴展，現在還有 Agentic 的產品。

And I talked about in Gil's question earlier about time to value. We expect great expansion at all of these customers. So we're on a journey. I think we want to get certainly those retention levels to where -- between that and new offerings and expansion, they're going to be contributing at the -- like the rest of the portfolio that's been growing 50% CAGR for several years, and we expect that.

我之前在 Gil 的問題中談到了價值實現時間。我們期望所有這些客戶都能實現大幅擴張。所以我們正在旅途中。我認為，我們希望將這些保留水準提高到這樣的水平——透過新產品和擴張，它們將做出貢獻——就像幾年來一直以 50% 的複合年增長率增長的其他投資組合一樣，我們預計會如此。

Right now, we bought a company, and this was fully in the valuation that was declining, and we needed to turn that around. And we've started to do that. That's kind of similar to what we did with the Synq3 acquisition and that has turned around and now is growing at a very healthy level. And so we're just mid-journey on that. And retention is an important part of that, but also is our go-to-market motion. We're investing in both direct sales and indirect channel relationships. And all of that is going to help continue to help scale this year, but more importantly next year and the year after.

現在，我們收購了一家公司，但其估值正在下降，我們需要扭轉這種局面。我們已經開始這麼做了。這與我們收購 Synq3 的做法有點類似，現在情況已經好轉，並且正在以非常健康的水平增長。所以我們目前還處於這進程的中期。保留是其中一個重要的部分，也是我們進入市場的動力。我們對直接銷售和間接通路關係均進行投資。所有這些都將有助於今年繼續擴大規模，但更重要的是明年和後年。

Scott Buck, H.C. Wainwright.

斯科特·巴克，H.C.溫賴特。

Thanks for taking my questions and apologies bouncing around on some calls this afternoon. So you may have already answered this. But I guess first, I'm curious, looking at the reaffirmed guide, should we be assuming -- or maybe you can talk just about what the M&A environment looks like.

感謝您回答我的問題，並對您今天下午的一些電話溝通表示歉意。所以你可能已經回答了這個問題。但我想首先，我很好奇，看看重申的指南，我們是否應該假設 - 或者也許你可以談談併購環境是什麼樣的。

I mean you guys have done several deals in the past. Are you -- is the environment conducive to doing a deal to get you to the current $157 million and $177 million? Or are you thinking of that more as an organical?

我的意思是你們過去已經做過幾筆交易。現在的環境是否有利於達成交易，使你們的金額達到目前的 1.57 億美元和 1.77 億美元？還是您認為它更像是一種有機物？

Yeah. I'll break that question into two things, Scott. Number one, we don't need M&A to achieve the outlook we provided here. There was no embedded assumption of acquiring anything in that.

是的。斯科特，我將把這個問題分成兩部分。首先，我們不需要透過併購來實現我們在此提出的前景。其中並不包含獲取任何東西的內在假設。

And I think our organic opportunity across some of the questions I gave earlier and opportunities across our verticals and product sets is quite tremendous. And the outlook for this year will be much smaller than the outlook we gave for next year. And so we're really bullish on what we're driving ourselves.

我認為，我們在之前提出的一些問題以及我們的垂直行業和產品系列中的機會是相當巨大的。今年的前景將比我們對明年的前景小得多。因此，我們對自己所推動的事情非常有信心。

That said, I think the the opportunity for continued acquisition is there, like there is a lot of -- and I will say now, after having done a few last year, we get a lot of active inbound inquiries for folks looking for sort of another stage in there journey and thinking about partnerships. So I'll just go back to how we frame and think about it.

話雖如此，我認為持續收購的機會仍然存在，就像有很多——我現在要說的是，在去年做了一些收購之後，我們收到了很多積極的入站諮詢，這些諮詢是針對那些尋求旅程的另一個階段並考慮合作的人。因此我將回顧我們如何建構和思考它。

I believe I mentioned this in prior calls. As long as an M&A is aligned to the strategic vision of what we're trying to drive and ultimately, this company is about, we're in a new GenAI LLM era. We believe conversational AI and in particular, the new wave of how humans interact with technology is just getting going. We're going to create the next major inflection in the human technology interface and voice AI will be the killer app in that world.

我相信我在之前的通話中提到過這一點。只要併購符合我們試圖推動的策略願景以及公司的最終目標，我們就進入了一個新的 GenAI LLM 時代。我們相信對話式人工智慧，特別是人類與科技互動的新浪潮才剛開始。我們將在人機介面技術中創造下一個重大轉折點，語音人工智慧將成為這個世界的殺手級應用。

And we have built a proprietary stack with patent portfolio. And we have great engineers that have been working on this for a long time, and we're building amazing products around it. And that's the vision we can build ourselves. But we also know in a couple of cases last year and as we look at the landscape, there might be other partners and acquisition targets that we may find accelerates on that strategic journey.

我們已經建立了擁有專利組合的專有堆疊。我們擁有優秀的工程師，他們長期致力於此，並且我們正在圍繞它打造令人驚嘆的產品。這就是我們可以自己建構的願景。但我們也知道，在去年的幾個案例中，當我們審視情勢時，可能會發現其他合作夥伴和收購目標正在加速這個策略進程。

We're open to those dialogues, and we have a team dedicated to constantly mining and looking at that. So if it's on strategy, something we'll look at. If it's something we can operationalize and integrate, if it's acquisitions we did last year, we got real complementary assets and people and teams that we've now integrated and it's helping us work better and smarter and maybe professionalizing things that could have used maturity for us prior to the acquisition.

我們對這些對話持開放態度，我們有一個團隊致力於不斷挖掘和研究這些問題。因此，如果是戰略問題，我們會考慮。如果這是我們能夠運作和整合的事情，如果這是我們去年進行的收購，那麼我們就獲得了真正的互補資產、人員和團隊，現在我們已經整合了這些，這有助於我們更好、更智能地工作，並可能使收購前就成熟的事情更加專業化。

So as long as we have it on strategy, we can operationalize it and ultimately and most importantly, is it's at the right price, a lot of the deals we do, we do shared economics. So even for people looking for exits, we kind of go, hey, if you can bring this to bear, if you believe in what your company can do and together what we can build, let's ride the upside together.

因此，只要我們有策略，我們就可以實施它，最終也是最重要的是，只要價格合適，我們做的許多交易都是共享經濟。因此，即使對於那些尋求退出的人來說，我們也會說，嘿，如果你能做到這一點，如果你相信你的公司可以做什麼以及我們共同可以創造什麼，那就讓我們一起努力吧。

And I think that's a unique proposition for companies looking for exits right now where they could kind of say, hey, tired. I'm done with it. Let's move on. Or a lot of times people just -- the circumstance is organizations coming together is a real accelerant. That's kind of the partnership frame that we look at when we think of M &A opportunities.

我認為，對於那些正在尋求退出機會的公司來說，這是一個獨特的主張，他們可能會說，嘿，累了。我已經完成了。我們繼續吧。或者很多時候人們只是——情況是組織聚集在一起是一種真正的加速器。這就是我們在考慮併購機會時所考慮的合作架構。

We're openly looking. Nothing's on the immediate horizon. Nothing's needed for this year's outlook, but I believe over the next five years, we will continue to look and grow. And I think the industry that is quite early stage will naturally, over time, consolidate. And I think that's just natural part of any healthy, burgeoning industry, and we'll be hopefully a major player in that.

我們正在公開觀察。眼前還沒有任何進展。今年的展望沒什麼好說的，但我相信未來五年，我們仍會繼續展望、持續成長。我認為，隨著時間的推移，處於早期階段的產業自然會得到鞏固。我認為這只是任何健康、蓬勃發展的行業的自然組成部分，我們希望成為其中的主要參與者。

Great, I appreciate that added color. And second, I'm curious, should investors be thinking about a more challenging macroenvironment as potentially being a revenue catalyst, given the efficiencies that you bring to the customers? Just given the macro seems -- the perception of the macro seems to change every six hours, trying to think about how you guys think about potential slowdown in the economy.

太好了，我很欣賞添加的顏色。其次，我很好奇，考慮到您為客戶帶來的效率，投資者是否應該將更具挑戰性的宏觀環境視為潛在的收入催化劑？鑑於宏觀似乎——宏觀的看法似乎每六個小時就會發生變化，試著想想你們如何看待經濟的潛在放緩。

Yeah, I mean, could jump. My personal view a little bit is that macro kind of ebbs and flows and goes through cyclical. It goes through the cycles that maybe people measure in months or quarters. I mean, we're really talking about a generational shift in how humans are interacting with technology. We believe the next 15 years are going to massively inflect.

是的，我的意思是，可以跳。我個人的觀點是，宏觀經濟有起有落，經歷週期性。它會經歷人們以月或季度來衡量的周期。我的意思是，我們實際上正在談論人類與科技互動方式的世代轉變。我們相信未來 15 年將會發生巨大的變化。

And again, it's going to be conversational AI led with voice capabilities. It's going to be underpinned by generative AI and large language models and the sort of the architectures that we can orchestrate and arbitrate between, and those are the solutions we're bringing.

再次強調，它將是具有語音功能的對話式人工智慧。它將以生成式人工智慧和大型語言模型以及我們可以協調和仲裁的架構為基礎，這些就是我們帶來的解決方案。

And so as Keyvan mentioned to an earlier question, we actually think the AI story has resilience on either upside innovation that's required to help companies scale, or on the downside efficient risk protection part. And honestly, the solution with different customers, they have different needs. But I do think what we've seen even during these last quarter or two quarters of volatility, the AI penetration of the wallet or the IT budgets is not slowing down at all. In fact, it's growing.

正如 Keyvan 在先前的問題中提到的那樣，我們實際上認為人工智慧無論是在幫助公司擴大規模所需的上行創新方面，還是在下行有效風險保護方面都具有彈性。老實說，針對不同客戶的解決方案，他們有不同的需求。但我確實認為，即使在最近一個季度或兩個季度的波動中，人工智慧對錢包或 IT 預算的滲透也絲毫沒有放緩。事實上，它正在增長。

It's -- again, we don't think that that doesn't show signs of evading. And I think what people are more curious about are, and if I take a three-year view of what's been going on in AI, we were first like, okay, everybody needs to get the hardware pieces and the GPUs and then everybody needs a cloud service provider. We're now clearly in the zone of applications and how do I get outcomes that really help my customers, my end customers. That's the conversations we're having every day with our customers. And I think that has a lot of resilience.

再說一次，我們認為這並沒有顯示出逃避的跡象。我認為人們更好奇的是，如果我以三年為週期來回顧人工智慧的發展，我們首先會想，好吧，每個人都需要獲得硬體和 GPU，然後每個人都需要一個雲端服務提供者。我們現在顯然處於應用領域，我如何獲得真正幫助我的客戶、我的最終客戶的成果。這就是我們每天與客戶的對話。我認為這具有很大的彈性。

So I don't know relative to where investors' expectations, because certainly there is volatility, but we think we've got a lot of runway ahead. And we're not certainly immune to macro volatility. I don't mean to suggest that, but I think we've still got a ton of opportunity to go after.

因此，我不知道相對於投資者的預期，因為肯定存在波動，但我們認為我們還有很長的路要走。我們當然也無法免於宏觀波動的影響。我並不是想提出這個建議，但我認為我們仍然有大量的機會去追求。

Thank you. And with that, this concludes the question-and-answer session. Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect. Everyone have a great day.

謝謝。問答環節到此結束。感謝大家參加今天的會議。該計劃確實就此結束。您現在可以斷開連線。祝大家有個愉快的一天。