Why SoundHound is valued at 5 Shazams – TechCrunch

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Voice AI company SoundHound is set to go public on the Nasdaq via a SPAC transaction at a nearly $2.1 billion valuation in early 2022, blank check company Archimedes and its target announced.

The last time you heard SoundHound’s name might have been several years ago when it was considered a lesser-known Shazam competitor. Now it’s worth 5.25x what Apple paid for the leading music recognition service – some $400 million, in a transaction that closed in the fall of 2018. That was five years after TechCrunch reported on SoundHound‘s “struggles to exit Shazam’s shadow,” despite boasting more than 175 million users.

So what happened that would make SoundHound now significantly more valuable than its British counterpart?

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Well, some of the discrepancy might be due to Shazam’s somewhat bumpy trajectory; after all, it was valued at $1.02 million post money in its 2015 fundraise. But it’s SoundHound we are looking at today, because if its SPAC deck is to be believed, it seems it is just doing magic in plain sight.

To find out more, let’s have a closer look at SoundHound’s history, and dig into the case it is making to argue for its double unicorn valuation.