What Are 2 Great Tech Stocks Flying Under the Radar Right Now?

SoundHound's revenue nearly doubled in 2025 and it is nearing adjusted EBITDA profitability after acquiring Amelia to build a voice-first agentic AI platform; the stock is down nearly 40% YTD. AppLovin reported revenue up 66% last quarter, gross margins expanded 420 bps to 88.9% and S&M was cut 21%, while its stock is down >40% YTD as it scales internationally and beyond mobile gaming. Both companies' operational momentum and strategic moves suggest meaningful upside at the stock level, though the piece notes Motley Fool's Stock Advisor did not include SoundHound in its top-10 picks (disclosure: Motley Fool holds positions in Nvidia and SoundHound).

Analysis

SoundHound’s move to a voice-first agent platform creates a vector that can re-price parts of the contact-center stack rather than just add a point product. If enterprise customers accept agentic voice as a replacement for tier-1 support, incumbents that bill on per-seat software and human FTEs will see contracted, sticky SaaS ARR displaced by far lower marginal-cost voice interactions—this amplifies gross margin upside for a successful integrator and shortens payback on customer acquisition if time-to-value is under six months.

Second-order hardware and infrastructure effects matter: high-quality voice agents push demand to both cloud inference and edge NPU suppliers. That helps Nvidia for cloud-hosted inference but creates a parallel pathway where Qualcomm/Apple silicon could capture on-device use cases (automotive, mobile), fragmenting addressable compute spend and capping cloud vendor pricing power. For AppLovin, algorithm-driven CPM gains and lower S&M create a rare mix of top-line acceleration and operating leverage, but its exposure to mobile ad cyclicality and ID-resolution volatility means momentum can reverse quickly if ARPU per MAU dips or privacy constraints tighten.

Key risks are execution and adoption friction: enterprise POCs typically take 3–12 months and failure modes are obvious—speech degradation in noisy channels, regulatory/privacy pushback, and failure to integrate with legacy CRM workflows. Catalysts to watch are multi-customer pilots scaling to paid deployments (SoundHound) and self-serve adoption/international revenue inflection (AppLovin) within the next 2–4 quarters. The consensus is excited about exponential upside, but underestimates multi-year contract sales friction and competitive bundling by hyperscalers, making a staged, hedged approach prudent.

Key Decisions for Investors

• Long SOUN via a 9–12 month call spread sized to 1–2% portfolio risk (debit spread) — thesis pays off if two mid-market deals convert to paid ARR within 12 months; target 2.5–3x return, max loss = premium paid.
• Pair trade: long SOUN (1%) / short NICE (1%) equal-dollar — isolates adoption of voice-first agents vs incumbents; unwind if SOUN POC-to-paid conversion <50% within 12 months or NICE announces strategic bundling with major hyperscaler.
• Long APP outright (2–3% position) or 12-month call spread — hold for 6–12 months to capture margin expansion from self-serve and international ramp; set stop-loss to limit drawdown to 20% if quarterly retention or CPMs decline sequentially.
• Event hedge: buy short-dated puts on APP (30–60 days) sized small to protect against an ad-spend shock or macro slowdown coinciding with earnings — cost justified by asymmetric downside in ad cyclicality.