Good morning! Lucy Brewster here, filling in for Sheryl.
When A.I. voice company SoundHound went public via a SPAC in April 2022, it was entering a brutal market—and the company, which provides brands with A.I.-powered voice features and saw huge growth in 2021's bull market, hit a drought. In January 2023, the company laid off nearly half of its staff in a massive restructuring. "We went out in a very difficult market where interest rates were really putting a lot of pressure on technology stocks and there was pressure to get profitable sooner than originally anticipated," explained CFO Nitesh Sharan to Fortune.
