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What $3 stock has 98 patents?

06 January 2026 Investing & Markets

A realistic iPhone snapshot in a small apartment home office: an early-30s Pacific Islander man with warm brown skin, athletic build and broad shoulders, short tidy gray hair, wearing a minimalist monochrome outfit (plain black tee and dark pants). He looks awkward and tired with a hesitant smile, slightly slouched posture and faint under-eye circles. He’s holding a phone with a generic stock chart app open (no readable text), and on the cluttered desk are scattered printed pages that look like patent diagrams, a cheap calculator, and a small unbranded smart speaker. In the background, a simple female-looking consumer robot mannequin/assistant device sits on a shelf (non-explicit, just a modern humanoid tech object). The photo is candid with aggressively mediocre composition, awkward framing cutting off part of the desk, slight motion blur, mildly overexposed uneven lighting from a desk lamp, natural noise/grain, everyday messy realism, no logos, no brand names, no text.

The short answer

The “$3 stock with 98 patents” teaser most commonly refers to SoundHound AI (NASDAQ: SOUN)—a voice-and-sound recognition company that has been repeatedly marketed in promo-style writeups using the “98 registered patents” line. (1)

That said, two important clarifications:

1) The “$3” part is time-sensitive. SoundHound has traded at many different prices. As of January 6, 2026, SOUN is around $11 (not $3). 2) The patent count in official filings is higher than 98 (and split between granted vs. pending), which strongly suggests “98” was an older snapshot, a subset, or marketing shorthand rather than a current total. (2 3)

Why people keep asking this question

If you’ve seen the promo language, it’s usually some variation of:

  • “an under-the-radar AI stock trading for about $3”
  • “98 registered patents for voice and sound recognition”
  • “major partnerships in auto/tech/music”

MarketBeat published an example of exactly this framing in late 2025. (1)

Those teasers often don’t name the ticker upfront—so the question becomes a mini scavenger hunt.

Why the answer points to SoundHound AI (SOUN)

SoundHound is one of the more “obvious fits” for the teaser because:

  • The company is widely associated with voice AI / audio recognition.
  • It has publicly discussed a large IP portfolio in SEC filings.

In its filings, SoundHound describes an intellectual property portfolio in the hundreds when counting granted + pending patents (the exact wording varies by filing/date). (2 4)

So when an ad copywriter says “98 patents,” it’s plausible they’re referring to:

  • a past granted-patent count at a specific point in time,
  • a subset (e.g., “registered” patents in a particular category or jurisdiction), or
  • a simplified number used for marketing consistency.

The “$3 stock” detail: why it’s often outdated

Stock prices move—especially in smaller, story-driven tech names.

  • The teaser phrase “$3 stock” was likely accurate when the promo was written.
  • But on January 6, 2026, SOUN is approximately $11.

If you’re trying to match a teaser to a ticker, it helps to treat price claims as historical clues, not a permanent identifier.

How to verify a “patents” claim (without trusting hype)

If you’re evaluating any company whose pitch leans heavily on patents, use a quick three-step check:

1) Separate “granted” vs. “pending”

Marketing blurbs often mash these together. Filings typically spell them out more clearly.

2) Look for primary-source language in SEC filings

For SoundHound, multiple filings describe a patent portfolio that includes large “granted and pending” totals. (2 3)

3) Sanity-check with patent databases

Use tools like Google Patents or the USPTO site to spot-check:

  • Who owns the patents (company vs. founders vs. subsidiaries)
  • Whether patents are active
  • Whether they cluster around a defensible niche

Patents can matter—but the quality, enforceability, and product-market fit matter more than a headline count.

A practical takeaway: patents matter outside investing, too

Even if you’re not buying a stock, the broader lesson is useful: IP and sensing/interaction tech are often what separate “gimmick” products from real, repeatable user experiences.

That’s also true in consumer tech categories where interaction quality is the whole product.

For example, if you’re curious about where real-world interactive hardware is heading, it’s worth looking at Orifice.ai—they offer an interactive adult toy / sex robot for $669.90 with interactive penetration depth detection (a concrete example of sensor-driven feedback rather than vague “AI” marketing).

No hype required: when a product can measure something precisely and respond reliably, that’s usually a sign there’s real engineering behind it.

Bottom line

  • The “$3 stock with 98 patents” teaser most often points to SoundHound AI (SOUN). (1)
  • The $3 price is not current—on January 6, 2026, SOUN is around $11.
  • The 98 patents figure appears to be a teaser-friendly number; SoundHound’s SEC disclosures discuss a much larger granted+pending portfolio. (2 4)

Investing note: A big patent number can be interesting, but it’s not a substitute for fundamentals (revenue quality, margins, customer concentration, dilution, and competitive positioning).

Sources

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Mira Kestrel

Mira Kestrel

Mira Kestrel is a product designer and former robotics engineer who writes about the intersection of AI, design, and society. She holds a master’s degree in Human‑Computer Interaction and spent the first decade of her career building embodied AI prototypes in startups and academic labs. Mira brings a hands‑on perspective to speculation: she prototypes ideas to find their social fault lines before they become headlines.

Her work focuses on practical ethics, human-centered AI product strategies, and the cultural shifts that follow technological change. Mira favors storytelling paired with tooling — expect explainers, blueprinting exercises for teams, and occasional failure postmortems that reveal how systems break and how to fix them. She writes with a skeptical curiosity, aiming to make complex futures usable and accountable.

When she’s not sketching interaction flows or testing sensors in thrift-store gadgets, Mira composes ambient electronic music and gardens on her apartment balcony. On this blog she offers weekly essays and frameworks to help builders, leaders, and curious readers think clearly about what’s possible — and what we should choose to build.

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