Veritone Q4 Earnings Call Highlights

Preliminary Q4 revenue came in a wide range of $18.1M to $30M driven almost entirely by a single non‑monetary deal that sold on‑prem aiWARE for a contracted $12.9M in exchange for dataset rights and a fixed 50% revenue share, creating accounting uncertainty that could push recognized revenue toward the low end; management expects to begin monetizing those datasets as early as Q2 2026 and forecasts they could generate over $100M in VDR revenue over three years.
Veritone announced a multi‑year strategic partnership with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) to accelerate aiWARE deployment with financial incentives, while also engaging major hyperscalers (Nvidia, Amazon, Google, Meta) and launching the Veritone Data Marketplace to streamline data licensing and distribution.
For fiscal 2026 the company guided to revenue of $130M–$145M (about 47% growth at the midpoint versus its preliminary 2025 floor), with gross margins of 60%–65% and a non‑GAAP net loss of $13.5M–$22.5M; on the balance sheet Veritone retired its senior secured term debt, repurchased about half its convertible notes (cutting annual debt costs ~90%), and finished fiscal 2025 with $27.7M cash.
Veritone (NASDAQ:VERI) used its preliminary fourth-quarter 2025 results call to outline a wide revenue range tied to one complex transaction, detail a newly announced partnership with Oracle, and provide fiscal 2026 guidance centered on growth in its Veritone Data Refinery (VDR) business and public sector momentum.
Preliminary Q4 results shaped by a single non-monetary deal
Management said preliminary fourth-quarter 2025 revenue is expected to fall in a broad range of $18.1 million to $30 million, with the spread “almost entirely driven” by a single, multi-party, non-monetary transaction completed and signed during Q4.
CEO Ryan Steelberg said the transaction included an on-premises sale of Veritone’s aiWARE stack and application software with a contracted price of $12.9 million. In exchange, Veritone received intangible rights and “direct and preferred access” to customers controlling a large volume of digital datasets that could be used in VDR and AI model training under a fixed 50% revenue share, which Steelberg described as an improvement versus current VDR margins.
However, Steelberg emphasized that accounting for the transaction is challenging because the value of the data rights is prospective, and the market for data sales and VDR is still relatively new. As a result, the “standalone selling price” attributed to the software could be “discounted substantially” for GAAP revenue recognition, pushing the $12.9 million contracted amount toward the lower end of the revenue range. The company said it is working with internal and external resources to complete the analysis by the time it files its Form 10-K.
Strategic dataset access and VDR supply constraints
Steelberg said Veritone already has exclusive and non-exclusive rights to monetize datasets from content and IP owners, citing relationships including the NCAA and CBS News. But he said customer demand for VDR-specific content increased substantially in 2025 and varied widely. He noted that in fiscal 2025, Veritone “was forced to turn down more than $10 million worth of bona fide data orders” because it could not source the needed volume or specific content types within required time frames.
Management said the Q4 dataset transaction is intended to expand supply. Steelberg said Veritone now has preferred access to potential VDR customers who control more than 50 million hours of monetizable datasets, adding that the NCAA video library is less than 1% of that size by comparison. As an example, he cited a recently signed agreement with a major fast food franchisee to access multi-camera video surveillance footage, which he said is in demand by hyperscalers for frontier and “world model” development.
Steelberg said Veritone’s internal forecasts “conservatively” estimate that datasets connected to the transaction could generate over $100 million in VDR revenue over the next three years and that the company expects to begin monetizing the data as early as Q2 2026. He also stressed that Veritone gained access to these datasets without an upfront cash expenditure.
Oracle partnership to underpin next-generation AI solutions
The company also highlighted a newly announced, multi-year strategic partnership with Oracle. Steelberg said the agreement is designed to accelerate deployment of Veritone’s aiWARE platform, applications, and data services via Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and includes “substantial financial cash incentives” intended to help Veritone scale compute and storage at more efficient cost levels.
Under the agreement, OCI is expected to become a “cornerstone” of Veritone’s next-generation AI solutions across commercial, public sector, and VDR markets. Steelberg said Veritone plans to leverage OCI’s “high-performance AI superclusters” and pointed to Oracle’s distributed cloud for “price performance, security, and data sovereignty.”
Operational update: hyperscalers, marketplace launch, and segment momentum
Steelberg said Veritone has completed a two-year transformation to focus around aiWARE as an orchestration and intelligence layer for enterprise and public sector AI and unstructured data. He characterized VDR as a “scaled token production engine” and said the company is engaged with, under contract with, and generating revenue from major hyperscalers and model developers, including Nvidia, Amazon, Google, and Meta.
He also pointed to the recent launch of the Veritone Data Marketplace built on aiWARE, describing it as a distribution hub intended to streamline the data licensing ecosystem with governance, transparency, and control for rights holders and AI developers. Steelberg positioned the Marketplace as complementary to VDR, with VDR preparing data for AI use and the Marketplace enabling transaction and distribution.
In the public sector, Steelberg said the division delivered 68% year-over-year growth. He attributed performance to applications such as the Veritone iDEMS suite, deployment flexibility including sensitive and air-gapped environments, and an open architecture designed to avoid vendor lock-in. He cited integration within the Air Force OSI and the JPATS Modernization Program and described pipeline levels as record-high, referencing Q4 wins including a major U.S. university, a top-five sheriff department, and a major state highway patrol.
In commercial enterprise, Steelberg said the company is seeing operational scale in its “data-to-AI flywheel.” He noted that in Q4 the licensing team executed 224 orders, nearly 10% higher than the prior year, and cited customers and partners across media, finance, and sports. He also said software deal volume grew 14% year-over-year to 33 deals in Q4.
Steelberg also highlighted results in the company’s hire division, now rebranded Broadbean by Veritone. He said Broadbean distributed over 7.6 million unique jobs in 2025, powering more than 40 million unique job ads and driving 132 million engagements. He cited a “major SaaS win” with the U.K.’s Department for Work and Pensions, and said the first year in the Workday Platinum Partner Program produced 59 new deals, a 30% increase over the prior year.
Fiscal 2026 guidance, balance sheet actions, and key risks
CFO Mike Zemetra provided fiscal 2026 guidance and balance sheet updates, noting that the company would not discuss preliminary 2025 financials in detail due to the results being unaudited. For 2026, Veritone guided to revenue of $130 million to $145 million, which Zemetra said represents 47% year-over-year growth at the midpoint compared with the low end of the company’s preliminary 2025 range.
Zemetra said public sector revenue is targeted to grow 60% to 70% year over year, with the remainder of growth expected to come from commercial enterprise, “predominantly from VDR.” He said Veritone Hire is expected to be flat to slightly down year over year due to macro hiring conditions, and managed services is expected to rise 10% to 15%, which he linked to improvements on the representation side of the business.
Additional fiscal 2026 expectations included:
Gross margin expected to fluctuate between 60% and 65%, driven by revenue mix.
Non-GAAP net loss expected to be $13.5 million to $22.5 million; Zemetra said the midpoint reflects a 54% improvement year over year versus the low end of the preliminary 2025 range.
Operating expenses: sales and marketing and G&A forecast to be relatively flat year over year, while R&D is expected to be slightly higher as the company invests in VDR, the Marketplace, and new product features.
Zemetra said Veritone expects sequential quarterly revenue growth in 2026, with Q1 2026 revenue approximating Q1 2025. He expects a more pronounced VDR ramp starting in Q2 and through the second half of the year, supported by anticipated timing of VDR deals and “the signing of several large hyperscalers in late Q1 2026.” He also cited the timing of government contracts as a factor in revenue ramp patterns.
He identified key risks to projections as the consumption-based nature of VDR and the timing and complexity of government contract decisions. Because of those factors, the company said it is providing guidance only for the full fiscal year 2026.
On the balance sheet, Zemetra said the company retired 100% of its senior secured term debt in Q4 and repurchased about 50% of its then-outstanding convertible notes. He said the moves reduced annual debt carry costs by about 90%, from roughly $14 million to about $800,000. Veritone ended fiscal 2025 with $27.7 million in unencumbered cash and cash equivalents, $45 million in 1.75% convertible debt, and 92.6 million shares outstanding.
Management reiterated its focus for 2026 on “disciplined scale,” including converting a VDR pipeline described as over $50 million into revenue and expanding public sector deployments, while continuing to improve dataset supply and platform capabilities.
About Veritone (NASDAQ:VERI)
Veritone, Inc (NASDAQ: VERI) is a technology company specializing in artificial intelligence solutions for media, legal, government and enterprise applications. Its flagship offering, aiWARE™, is a cloud-based operating system that orchestrates and automates an ecosystem of machine learning models to transform unstructured data—such as audio, video and text—into actionable intelligence. By providing a modular AI environment, Veritone enables organizations to deploy, manage and scale cognitive engines that address diverse use cases from transcription and translation to sentiment analysis and facial recognition.
Through aiWARE and its suite of purpose-built applications, the company delivers turnkey solutions for content licensing, media monitoring, eDiscovery, compliance and public safety.