SoundHound AI has cleared its earnings hurdle — and the first post-print session revealed a stock up 6.7% on the day, yet a borrow market that refused to budge even one millimetre.
The most important update from prior coverage is what has changed and what has not. Short interest has eased — 43.35% of the free float now, down from the 43.8% cycle peak flagged in the pre-earnings notes and off roughly 0.67% on the week. Cost to borrow has also pulled back, dropping nearly 20% from its July highs to 12.8%. That is the lowest carry rate in the 30-day window, and genuine relief after weeks of costs grinding toward 16%. The short book is lighter, and it is cheaper to run. Both of those are directional shifts from the setup documented across four consecutive pre-earnings articles.
The borrow market, though, has not moved at all. Availability remains pinned at exactly 0% — every single session across the full 30-day window, including Tuesday's post-print close. The ORTEX short score holds at 81.5, ranking this name in the 1st percentile of the entire universe for squeeze pressure. What that structural seal means in practice is that any covering which has happened was executed by buying shares in the open market, not by returning borrowed stock. There is no slack in the lending pool yet. The days-to-cover remains at 6.0. The tightness has a duration to it that the modest short interest unwind has not yet altered.
Options traders have shifted slightly, though the move is modest. The put/call ratio ticked up to 0.38, a hair above its 20-day average of 0.37 and up from the near-52-week-low readings that characterised the run into the print. That is a fractional normalisation from the heavily call-skewed positioning of the past month — still well below the 52-week high of 0.67, so options remain structurally call-biased rather than defensively positioned. The z-score at 0.53 is barely a half standard deviation above the mean. This is not a repositioning story in options; it is a minor exhale.
The Street remains constructive, even if the analyst data is somewhat dated. The consensus sits at "buy" with a mean price target around $13 — roughly double the current price of $6.51. That implied upside is real, though the most recent target changes on record (from May) showed Northland Capital Markets trimming to $12 after maintaining its Outperform rating, while DA Davidson held firm at $14. The bull case rests on diversified revenue streams, no debt, and genuine optionality in voice AI deployment across automotive and enterprise. The bear case is straightforward: the stock trades at roughly 15x forward revenue, pricing in near-flawless execution in a market where several well-capitalised rivals are moving fast. EPS momentum factor scores rank in the 88th percentile on a 30-day basis and the 99th percentile on 90 days — analyst estimates are being revised sharply higher, which is what keeps the buy consensus intact despite a name that is still burning cash and carrying a quality score that reflects it.
Founder-level insider selling on June 15 — CEO Keyvan Mohajer, CSO Seyed Emami, and COO Michael Zagorsek all sold on the same date — adds a note of caution on the ownership side. The net 90-day figure is $4.1m in sales. These were small as a percentage of company shares, but the synchronised timing across the founding team at $7.45 a share, above current levels, is worth noting. Peers had a strong week: QBTS gained nearly 24%, BMR rose 15%, and OPRA added 7%. SOUN's 4.3% weekly gain lagged the better performers in its correlation group — a mild underperformance on what was broadly a positive tape for the peer cluster.
The next inflection point is whether the borrow seal finally breaks. A return of even modest availability would be the first structural signal that the extreme squeeze pressure is genuinely unwinding rather than just easing at the margin.
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