From Dorm Room Dream to $6.5 Billion Reality: The Story of SoundHound’s Keyvan Mohajer
When Keyvan Mohajer walked across the stage at the University of Toronto to collect his engineering degree, he wasn’t just another graduate. By then, he had already launched three software companies SoundHound AI.
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Founded in his Stanford dorm room in 2004, SoundHound has since grown into a global voice-AI powerhouse, valued at more than $6.5 billion and counting Nvidia, Snapchat, and Mercedes-Benz among its clients. For Mohajer, now the company’s CEO, the journey hasn’t been linear. It’s been fueled by failure, resilience, and an unwavering belief in his vision.
“Every attempt, you should think of it as the one that’s going to succeed,” he says. “Don’t just throw darts randomly. Use everything you’ve learned, and eventually you’ll hit the bullseye.”
The Dorm Room Breakthrough
Mohajer’s fascination with movies and robots began in childhood, but it was at Stanford—alongside cofounders James Hom and Majid Emami—that his vision became tangible. Their first experiment? A product that could identify songs by humming.
Two weeks before Christmas, the team locked themselves in their dorm, coding furiously. On Christmas Eve, when Mohajer hummed the theme from The Godfather and the program correctly identified it, they knew they were onto something.
His pitch to investors was bold, almost prophetic: “In 20 years, we will talk to computers and they will talk back to us—and that will change computing.”
Building SoundHound and Beating the Odds
Turning that dream into a business wasn’t easy. SoundHound endured years of slow growth before landing major clients and recognition. But Mohajer’s guiding principle—pursuing what made his “heart beat faster”—kept him going.
“You can go through life checking boxes and being average,” he says. “But I wanted to push boundaries, to go where others haven’t gone before. That drive made me an entrepreneur.”
Today, SoundHound’s growth reflects that persistence. Its stock has surged over 200% in the past year, thanks in part to a revenue jump of 217% year-over-year.
The College Factor
SoundHound’s story underscores a broader truth: some of the most transformative companies are born in college dorm rooms.
Databricks, now worth $62 billion, traces its roots to Stanford. Google, valued at over $2.4 trillion, was conceived there as well. And, of course, Facebook—now Meta—emerged from Harvard, when Mark Zuckerberg and his roommates started building a social network that reshaped the world.
Zuckerberg himself once said, “We were just college kids. We didn’t know anything about that. I just assumed one of the big technology companies would do it.”
For Mohajer, Zuckerberg, and countless others, the lesson is clear: the campus isn’t just a place to earn a degree. It’s where bold ideas take flight.
