Latest news with #voiceAI
Yahoo
13 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
2 Growth Stocks That Could 10x Your Money
SoundHound AI's proprietary voice technology is tapping into a rapidly growing market. Duolingo is well-positioned to capitalize on the booming online learning market. 10 stocks we like better than SoundHound AI › If you're looking for stocks with huge return potential, you can increase your chances of success by focusing on companies that operate in a rapidly expanding industry. Great investments are usually made by jumping early on fast-growing companies that have enormous expansion potential for their particular sector. Here are two promising candidates that could potentially grow their share prices 10-fold in the coming years. Share prices of SoundHound AI (NASDAQ: SOUN) have been volatile, At the time of this writing, the stock is up 342% since the end of 2023. This follows growing demand for the company's conversational voice technology powered by artificial intelligence (AI). SoundHound's revenue more than doubled year over year in the first quarter. This comes after last year's acquisition of Amelia, which expanded SoundHound's technology to customer services across multiple industries, including retail and healthcare. AI is having a major impact on how people order at restaurants and interact with in-car services -- two of SoundHound's biggest markets. As AI's capabilities grow exponentially, demand is surging for SoundHound's voice AI. Over 1,000 new restaurant locations went live with SoundHound in Q1 -- a 10-fold increase over a year ago. The main negative for the company is that it is not earning a profit. In Q1, it reported a non-GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles) loss of $22 million, which is quite large on just $29 million of quarterly revenue. SoundHound generates revenue from product royalties, service subscriptions, and ads on its music identification app. These can be profitable revenue streams, so I wouldn't be too concerned about SoundHound's profitability at this early stage of growth. Keep in mind that SoundHound is not using off-the-shelf AI. Its AI is proprietary, based on 20 years of investment using data from real user interactions. SoundHound also has a strong balance sheet, with $246 million of cash and no debt. The company's growth shows huge market potential for its technology. The AI voice generator market is growing exponentially, expected to increase from $3 billion in 2024 to over $20 billion by 2030, according to MarketsandMarkets. SoundHound's market cap is currently $3.76 billion, with its share price around $9.40. Its market cap has to increase to $37.6 billion to deliver a 10-fold return to investors. This is possible within the next 10 years, considering SoundHound's rapid growth and the long-term trends supporting more AI integration across the economy. Online language learning is another fast-growing market that is benefiting from the use of AI. Duolingo (NASDAQ: DUOL) started in 2012 and is currently the top-grossing mobile learning app in Alphabet's Google Play and the Apple App Store. The company's rapid growth has sent the stock up 241% since its initial public offering in 2021. Duolingo makes it easy and fun to learn new languages, and it's attracting a lot of people. It had 130 million monthly active users in Q1, representing a 33% year-over-year increase. A high percentage of these users are engaging with the app every day, with the company reporting 46.6 million daily actives last quarter, for an increase of 49% year over year. The company uses the standard mobile app business model. Users can download the app for free and then pay for premium content. Duolingo had over 10 million paying users last quarter. This generated $230 million of revenue last quarter, up 38% year over year, while also reporting a healthy profit of $35 million. The online language learning market is expected to grow at an annualized rate of 21% through 2030 to reach $44 billion, according to Mordor Intelligence. AI will be a catalyst for growth, given the added personalization and other enhancements AI brings to the table. Duolingo says its Max subscription service, which brings AI-powered features to the learning experience, is one of its biggest opportunities. However, Duolingo also offers courses in math and music, indicating its long-term opportunity extends well beyond language learning. Content expansion, including the recent launch of chess, is a key part of the company's growth strategy. Duolingo's market cap is currently $21.8 billion at the current $480 share price. For the company to be worth $210 billion and deliver a 10-fold return to investors in 10 years, Duolingo needs to maintain annualized revenue growth of 25% and trade at the same 28x price-to-sales multiple. This implies growth that is marginally higher than the online language learning market. Duolingo's 40%-plus current revenue growth already puts it ahead of the curve. Moreover, its content expansion strategy positions it to grow faster than the market, making it a compelling growth stock to hold for multibagger returns. Before you buy stock in SoundHound AI, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the for investors to buy now… and SoundHound AI wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $659,171!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $891,722!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 995% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 172% for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join . See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of June 9, 2025 Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. John Ballard has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet and Apple. The Motley Fool recommends Duolingo. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. 2 Growth Stocks That Could 10x Your Money was originally published by The Motley Fool
Yahoo
a day ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Hexaware Teams Up with Fixie.ai to Power Voice AI for Smarter Enterprise Operations
Ultravox Realtime selected as Hexaware's voice AI platform of choice to power next-gen CX ISELIN, N.J., June 20, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Hexaware Technologies (NSE: HXT), a global provider of IT solutions and services, has announced a new partnership with a market leader in voice AI technology. As part of this collaboration, Hexaware will integrate Fixie's Ultravox Realtime platform into its enterprise solutions to deliver faster, smarter, and more natural voice-powered interactions for its clients. Fixie's Ultravox Realtime brings enterprise-grade voice recognition, and a scalable architecture designed to handle thousands of concurrent calls. For Hexaware, it adds another powerful tool to help clients reimagine customer engagement with voice AI that is fast, reliable, and ready for real-world deployment. "Our partnership with Fixie will enable them to access larger enterprise requirements across industries while enhancing our ability to simplify enterprise AI adoption for our clients," said Vinod Chandran, Chief Operations Officer at Hexaware. "With its developer-friendly design, accuracy, security and scalability, Ultravox Realtime is perfectly suited for the high-volume, integrated deployments our clients require. This collaboration enables us to deliver superior voice experiences, faster and more responsive customer interactions, especially during peak loads and multilingual situations." As part of the partnership, Hexaware is also supporting Fixie's open-source efforts by donating GPU computing resources. This will help accelerate the training of future Ultravox models, strengthening the open-source AI community while unlocking even more potential for enterprise users."We're thrilled to partner with Hexaware to bring voice AI to their impressive roster of clients," said Zach Koch, Chief Executive Officer of "This collaboration is a perfect alignment of capabilities – our advanced speech understanding provided by Ultravox Realtime paired with Hexaware's deep enterprise expertise. Their commitment to our open-source model development through GPU donation demonstrates a shared vision for advancing open-source voice AI technology while delivering immediate value to enterprise customers."Joint implementations are already in motion across industries like banking, insurance, retail, travel, healthcare, and more.. About is the market-leading provider of voice AI solutions, delivering advanced conversational capabilities through its scalable Ultravox Realtime [ platform. The company's technology enables natural, effective voice interactions for businesses of all sizes, with particular strength in high-volume, enterprise-grade implementations. The company actively maintains the open-source Ultravox model with weights available on HuggingFace [ About Hexaware Hexaware is a global technology and business process services company. Every day, Hexawarians wake up with a singular purpose; to create smiles through great people and technology. With offices across the world, we empower enterprises worldwide to realize digital transformation at scale and speed by partnering with them to build, transform, run, and optimize their technology and business processes. Learn more about Hexaware at Logo - View original content: SOURCE Hexaware Technologies Ltd. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Khaleej Times
a day ago
- Business
- Khaleej Times
CozmoX AI rolls taxi campaign showcasing Voice AI as the future of business
The city-wide campaign redefines business efficiency, highlighting how scalable voice AI teams are reshaping daily workflows in the UAE's innovation-driven economy CozmoX AI, a UAE-based artificial intelligence firm, has launched a striking new campaign across Dubai and Sharjah using branded taxis to introduce the region to its next-generation AI employees - technology built to fundamentally change how businesses operate. The campaign features the eye-catching slogan " Your next employee is not human" and aims to highlight the company's flagship product: voice-enabled AI employees capable of executing complex business tasks across multiple sectors, from sales and customer service to collections and scheduling. By leveraging Dubai's fast-moving urban landscape, CozmoX is using this out-of-home initiative to drive mass awareness around the benefits of integrating AI into daily business workflows. The branded taxis are designed not just to advertise, but to start a conversation around what the modern workforce looks like in an AI-powered economy. AI that talks, listens, and works - like a real team member Unlike simple bots or virtual assistants, CozmoX AI employees offer natural, real-time voice interaction supported by deep contextual understanding. They can be deployed instantly and operate seamlessly within systems like HubSpot, Zoho, Salesforce, and Slack. Whether it's qualifying leads, negotiating payments, booking appointments, or sending automated reports, these voice AI employees handle the full lifecycle of customer interaction and internal workflow. Their design reflects a deep commitment to enterprise functionality while retaining the conversational fluency of human representatives. "We call them AI employees, not agents, because they don't just run scripts, they own outcomes. They sell, support, follow up, and even recover revenue. They behave like real team members, not tools, and that's what makes them transformative for businesses of all sizes, and specifically enterprises." said Nuha Hashem, CoFounder of CozmoX. Dubai: The launchpad for smart enterprise The UAE has long positioned itself at the forefront of digital transformation, with government initiatives and private sector investments propelling AI into mainstream adoption. CozmoX's choice to unveil its platform via a mobile, visual campaign is a nod to Dubai's dynamic tech ecosystem and openness to disruptive innovation. The campaign has already gained traction on social platforms, where users have posted their reactions after calling the AI employees directly - many expressing surprise at how human-like and efficient the interactions were. The new frontier in business efficiency As companies across the region look to enhance productivity while keeping costs in check, the CozmoX model is resonating with forward-thinking executives. The ability to deploy scalable voice AI teams without increasing headcount positions the platform as a viable solution for startups, SMEs, and large enterprises alike. CoFounder, Alok Kumar also said "Repetitive jobs which do not require human intelligence will be eliminated by AI, so humans can focus on creative and productive jobs. Just like the dot-com era, jobs will evolve, and more meaningful ones will be created. That's why we architected CozmoX AI from the ground up like an operating system for voice automation; real-time, memory-aware, and built to scale across industries. It's a new layer of infrastructure for how work gets done." CozmoX is currently onboarding businesses across the UAE and beyond. From major players in insurance and financial services to leading organizations in healthcare, semi-government, and F&B, CozmoX is already live and driving impact across key sectors in the UAE and internationally. As the demand for smarter, more scalable operational models continues to grow, CozmoX is steadily onboarding ambitious businesses that are rethinking how work gets done. The company welcomes forward-looking organizations to connect and explore the possibilities of what voice AI can unlock for their operations.
Forbes
3 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
Voice-To-Voice Models And Beyond Meat: Still Not Ready For Mass Consumption
Arkadiy Telegin is the cofounder and CTO of Leaping AI, a conversational AI platform supporting customer experience departments worldwide. I'm vegan. So when plant-based meat started going mainstream, I was elated. The tech was impressive, the marketing confident and, for a moment, it felt like we were on the cusp of a food revolution. Impossible Burgers hit Burger King. Beyond was everywhere. Investors poured in. The future, it seemed, had arrived. Except it hadn't. Today, plant-based meat is still a niche. Prices are high, availability is inconsistent and adoption is slower than expected. It's not that the products disappeared. They just haven't yet integrated into everyday life the way we imagined. This is a classic case of psychological distance: a cognitive bias where things that feel close because they're exciting or well-promoted turn out to be farther off than we think. In voice AI, voice-to-voice model development is going through the same thing. Despite recent latency, reasoning and sound quality improvements, there's been a stubborn insistence on using older, more established technologies to build conversational AI platforms. Why is that? After LLMs appeared, the first commercial voice AI applications all used a 'cascading' approach following a three-step sequence: • Speech-To-Text (STT): Transcribe the user's speech to text. • Large Language Model (LLM): Use an LLM to respond to the transcribed user's speech. • Text-To-Speech (TTS): Synthesize speech from your response and play it back. This is a standard, time-tested approach that's been in use even before LLMs came around, primarily for language translation. Then, last fall, OpenAI launched its Realtime API, which promised a one-step speech-to-speech AI model capable of parsing audio directly to generate real-time responses, resulting in agents that sound much more human, can natively detect emotions and can be more 'tone aware.' OpenAI's entry into the space was the most commercially significant development yet, leading many to anticipate a new era for single-step voice-to-voice AI models that could feasibly be used in real-world applications. Over six months later, while Realtime API's launch has created a lot of excitement around direct speech-to-speech AI models—the recently announced Nova Sonic model from Amazon and Sesame's base model for its Maya assistant are just a few examples—when it comes to production-level applications, my industry colleagues and customers alike are still more comfortable using the status quo of multi-step pipelines, with no plans to change that any time soon. There are a few key reasons why that is the case. Working with audio presents inherent difficulties. Text is clean, modular and easily manipulated. It allows for storage, searchability and mid-call edits. Audio, in contrast, is less forgiving. Even post-call tasks like analysis and summarization often necessitate transcription. In-call operations, such as managing state or editing messages, are more cumbersome with audio. Function calling is crucial in production use-cases—fetching data, triggering workflows, querying APIs. Currently, one-step voice-to-voice models lag in this area. Stanford computer science professor and founder Andrew Ng, who also cofounded the Google Brain project, has publicly shared some of these limitations. It is much easier to create and curate a good function-calling dataset for a text-based model than for a multimodal model. As a result of this, the function-calling capabilities of text-first models will always outperform those of voice-to-voice models. Considering that function calling is not perfect even for text models yet and is a crucial requirement for commercial applications, it will take some time until voice-to-voice catches up to meet production standards. Ng shares the example of gut-checking responses like "Yes, I can issue you a refund" to ensure refunds are allowable against the current company policy and how an API can be called to issue that refund if the customer requests one. That's more doable to build in a cascading workflow but not as reliable for one-step pipelines for the reasons stated above. Since OpenAI launched its Realtime API, there have been a number of complaints that have made developers uneasy about using it in production, including audio cutting off unexpectedly and hallucinations interrupting live conversations. Others have complained of hallucinations that don't get captured in the transcript, making it challenging to catch and debug them. This isn't to say one-step voice-to-voice AI is a dead end. Far from it. The potential for enhanced user experience—handling interruptions, conveying emotion, capturing tone—is immense. Many in the industry, our team included, are actively experimenting, preparing for the moment when it matures. Startups and major players alike continue to invest in speech-native approaches as they anticipate a more emotionally resonant, real-time future. In other words: It's a matter of when, not if. In the meantime, multi-step pipelines for voice-to-voice AI models continue to win on reliability and production-readiness. With steady improvements, particularly in behavior and function calling, the moment for single-step models will come. Until then, the trusted cascading approach will carry the load, and I'm still not eating at Burger King. Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?
Forbes
4 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
SoundHound AI: Buy, Sell, or Hold SOUN Stock At $10?
CHONGQING, CHINA - FEBRUARY 23: In this photo illustration, the SoundHound AI logo is displayed on a ... More smartphone screen, with the company's latest stock market performance and candlestick charts visible in the background, highlighting SoundHound AI's real-time financial trends, stock price fluctuations, market volatility, and investment developments within the artificial intelligence, voice recognition, and technology sectors, on February 23, 2025 in Chongqing, China. (Photo by) SoundHound AI (NASDAQ:SOUN), a voice AI platform empowering businesses with conversational AI experiences, has recently experienced a significant stock decline, plummeting over 50% year-to-date to $10. A substantial portion of this drop occurred in January, largely due to disappointed investor expectations following the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). The stock has yet to see a meaningful recovery since then. From a valuation perspective, SoundHound AI stock still appears overpriced. We believe there are several factors contributing to this unattractiveness, especially when considering its current high valuation. Our conclusion is based on a comprehensive comparison of SOUN's current valuation against its recent operating performance and its current and historical financial health. Our in-depth analysis of SoundHound AI, covering key parameters such as Growth, Profitability, Financial Stability, and Downturn Resilience, indicates that the company has demonstrated only moderate operating performance and financial condition. These factors collectively raise concerns about the stock's current appeal. That said, if you seek upside with lower volatility than individual stocks, the Trefis High Quality portfolio presents an alternative - having outperformed the S&P 500 and generated returns exceeding 91% since its inception. On a separate note, see – Should You Buy CRWV Stock After A Whopping 4x Rise? Going by what you pay per dollar of sales or profit, SOUN stock looks very expensive compared to the broader market. SoundHound AI's Revenues have grown considerably over recent years. SoundHound AI's profit margins are considerably worse than most companies in the Trefis coverage universe. SoundHound AI's balance sheet looks very strong. SOUN stock has fared much worse than the benchmark S&P 500 index during some of the recent downturns. While investors have their fingers crossed for a soft landing by the U.S. economy, how bad can things get if there is another recession? Our dashboard How Low Can Stocks Go During A Market Crash captures how key stocks fared during and after the last six market crashes. In summary, SoundHound AI's performance across the parameters detailed above are as follows: • Growth: Extremely Strong • Profitability: Extremely Weak • Financial Stability: Extremely Strong • Downturn Resilience: Extremely Weak • Overall: Neutral Even though SoundHound AI shows a neutral performance in the areas we analyzed, its extremely high valuation makes the stock unattractive, in our view. Of course, we could be wrong; investors might be willing to pay such a high valuation multiple for SOUN stock given its aggressive revenue growth, supported by its Amelia acquisition. However, the risk at these levels appears high. In fact, we apply risk assessment framework while constructing Trefis High Quality (HQ) Portfolio which, with a collection of 30 stocks, has a track record of comfortably outperforming the S&P 500 over the last 4-year period. Why is that? As a group, HQ Portfolio stocks provided better returns with less risk versus the benchmark index; less of a roller-coaster ride as evident in HQ Portfolio performance metrics.
