SoundHound, the tech startup behind the voice assistant features of some of your favorite companies, announced last Tuesday its plan to go public via a $2.1b SPAC merger with Archimedes Tech SPAC Partners (ATSPU).
California-based SoundHound was founded in 2005 by a group of Stanford graduates and offers a voice-based artificial intelligence platform that helps businesses to integrate conversational voice assistants with their products. SoundHound’s current customers include Hyundai Motor Co, Mercedes-Benz, Mastercard (MA), and Snap (SNAP).
The deal is expected to close sometime in the first quarter of next year and will provide SoundHound with total proceeds of $244m, with $111m of this coming from a private placement in public equity led by Oracle (ORCL), Koch Industries, and MKaNN Ventures.
Why it matters
SoundHound is planning to use the proceeds of its offering to help it expand to more international markets. The company's techhnology is currently available in 22 languages with several additions to this in the works.