SoundHound – Voice Intelligence Anywhere
SoundHound is using AI with the aim of integrating voice and conversational intelligence into any product.
What was once just a music identification application allowing users to identify songs through audio recognition, SoundHound has since positioned itself to be a formidable player in the voice assistant space. Leveraging its advanced capabilities in natural language processing, SoundHound launched its Hound voice assistant in the effort to allow people to interact with anything—from cars to coffee machines—the same way they interact with each other. Powered by the “Speech-to-Meaning” engine underpinning the Houndify platform, the Hound virtual assistant has been at the core of SoundHound’s growth and partnerships with companies such as Mercedes-Benz, Motorola, and Pandora.
Value Creation
In this vision of a more connected world, Hound and the underlying Houndify Platform play a unique role in the voice assistant space. Houndify is the sole independent AI platform allowing businesses to integrate voice intelligence into their products while also maintaining control over their brand and user experience. [1] By providing support for services such as customized wake words (for example, “Hey Siri”) that businesses can tailor to their own brand, Houndify differentiates itself as the B2B solution for voice intelligence. The built-in voice assistant integrates seamlessly with the brand’s user experience.
SoundHound also provides a host of developer tools and knowledge graphs as part of its technologies set, as well as over 125 domains of understanding. This is more than four times the number of domains available through Siri and Google. [2] Domains are programs that provide conversational interfaces for a specific topic (such as sports, restaurants, etc.). When enabled in a product, these domains allow users to interact with the product through natural language rather than memorizing hard-coded commands. With this growing set of domains and capabilities, SoundHound has not only an advantage in its advanced and high speed speech recognition engine, but also its scalability as a voice-enabled AI assistant.
In addition to these features, SoundHound has been testing beta features to add even greater value to its customers, including emotion detection, automatic language translation, and voice biometrics. [3]
Value Capture
Valued at over $1 billion, SoundHound raised a $100 series D round in 2018 to drive the growth of its Houndify platform across new verticals, as well as fund geographic expansion into new markets including China, Germany, and France. [4] SoundHound’s revenue streams include advertising revenue from its SoundHound music recognition app, as well as subscription fees from its Houndify technology. [5]
As SoundHound expands its voice assistance technology into new verticals and builds strategic partnerships across these industries, exploring new models could allow SoundHound to capitalize on its growth in creative ways. For example, revenue sharing models might be a way to further drive growth by aligning incentives and allowing for greater upside as the platform scales.
Sources
[2] https://www.soundhound.com/houndify
[3] ibid.
[5] https://vizologi.com/business-strategy-canvas/soundhound-business-model-canvas/