Beyond Chips: The Real AI Windfall Might Be in Software Stocks This Year

2026-01-04 16:00:28

The AI Agent Revolution Is Just Getting Started

While everyone’s been fixated on semiconductor stocks and infrastructure plays, the real derivative of log-growth potential might be sitting in AI software companies. 2026 could be the inflection point where AI software stocks finally steal the spotlight from hardware. The key catalyst? AI agents—autonomous systems that understand context, intent, and can execute tasks independently. Let’s break down three companies positioned to capitalize on this shift.

SoundHound AI: Voice as the AI Agent Interface

SoundHound AI (NASDAQ: SOUN) started as a voice recognition play, but it’s evolving into something much bigger—a voice-powered agentic AI platform. Here’s why this matters: as AI agents become mainstream, the ability to understand natural language and user intent becomes mission-critical.

The numbers tell the story. Revenue more than doubled in the first nine months of 2025, and the company has already locked down serious market traction:

Deep penetration in automotive (voice-activated assistants in vehicles)
Expanding footprint in restaurant tech (voice-operated ordering)
Acquired Amelia to build out its AI agent capabilities plus gain instant access to healthcare, financial services, and retail customers

SoundHound’s Amelia 7 platform is in full rollout mode, gross margins are expanding, and management expects positive EBITDA soon. The risk? Execution on scaling. But the runway looks solid.

Salesforce: The Underrated Data Gatekeeper

Salesforce (NYSE: CRM) was written off as an AI laggard, but that narrative is flipping. When AI agents need clean, organized, trustworthy data to operate, Salesforce suddenly becomes critical infrastructure—the system of record for customer data across service, marketing, and sales operations for thousands of enterprises globally.

The Informatica acquisition sealed the deal. By combining data integration capabilities with Salesforce’s existing customer data platform, the company is positioning itself as the authoritative source for enterprise data—exactly what AI agents need.

Their Agentforce solution is seeing explosive traction:

$540 million ARR last quarter, up 330%
Flexible pricing (seat-based or consumption-based) is driving adoption
Integrated across Slack, Tableau, and the core product suite

Valuation-wise, Salesforce is trading cheap:

Forward P/S ratio below 5.5x
Forward P/E around 20x
PEG ratio below 0.65 (anything under 1 signals undervaluation)

The stock has been beaten down, but the fundamentals are improving fast.

Snowflake: The Sticky Cloud Data Warehouse

Snowflake (NYSE: SNOW) operates a cloud data warehouse that lets enterprises store and access data across multiple cloud providers without vendor lock-in—at least on the front end. Once data moves into Snowflake, it’s remarkably sticky to extract.

The company is also riding the AI agent wave with Snowflake Intelligence, which lets customers build and deploy proprietary AI agents with secure data access. Here’s the kicker:

Over 1,200 customers actively using Snowflake Intelligence
$100 million AI revenue run rate already
Last quarter: 29% revenue growth
Net revenue retention of 125% over 12 months
Record number of new customer additions

Originally dismissed as an AI vulnerability, Snowflake has proven the skeptics wrong on all fronts.

The Common Thread: Data + AI Agents = Leverage

What connects these three? They all sit at the intersection of two mega-trends:

AI agents require trustworthy data – Voice interfaces (SoundHound), clean customer records (Salesforce), and cloud data warehouses (Snowflake) are all foundational to building AI agents that actually work at scale.
Each has switched to capturing AI value – They’ve gone from “how do we survive AI?” to “how do we profit from AI?” Agentforce, Amelia 7, and Snowflake Intelligence are their answers.

The 2026 playbook isn’t about betting on chip designers anymore. It’s about finding the software infrastructure that AI agents can’t operate without. These three stocks represent different angles on that same opportunity.

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