Looking for stocks that are trading at huge discounts to their average analyst price targets is a great way to find potential additions to your portfolio. While investors shouldn't buy such stocks without doing further research, starting a search with that filter can help you zoom in on stocks that might be headed much higher.
Two that Wall Street is bullish on are IonQ (IONQ 3.62%) and SoundHound AI (SOUN 4.11%). The average Wall Street analyst covering IonQ has a price target of $74.89 on the stock. Given that it trades at about $33.30, that projection implies a 125% upside. Meanwhile, according to Yahoo! Finance, the average price target on SoundHound AI is $16.31.Currently, it trades for about $7.50, indicating a forecast upside of 117%.
If those stocks can deliver returns like that, then they'd be no-brainer buys at today's levels. But are they surefire bets?
Image source: Getty Images.
A risk-off environment on Wall Street
Both IonQ and SoundHound AI are high-risk, high-potential-reward stocks.
IonQ is a pure play in the quantum computing space. With no other business endeavors to support it, it must achieve commercial relevance in quantum computing, or it risks going bankrupt. There are a host of different technological approaches to this emerging technology, and IonQ is taking a less common one: trapped-ion qubits. While all of the various approaches have their advantages and disadvantages, the biggest advantage of the trapped-ion approach is superior accuracy. With error correction and mitigation among the primary challenges that all quantum computing companies are facing, having a leg up on those fronts is a great thing. IonQ currently holds the world record for quantum computing accuracy by one key benchmark, and if it can maintain its lead, it has a strong chance of being a huge winner in the quantum computing space.
NYSE: IONQ
Key Data Points
SoundHound AI is combining voice recognition technology with generative AI. This has the potential to be a massive market, as its software could replace human workers in all sorts of customer interactions. These include tasks like taking restaurant drive-thru orders (an area that SoundHound AI is already performing well for many clients) and handling customer service calls. If SoundHound AI's technology can replace or supplement customer service reps, it could become a massive success, as that is a huge market.
NASDAQ: SOUN
Key Data Points
While the bull cases are fairly clear for both of these stocks, their paths to their price targets are cloudier. Since October 2025, the market has been selling off higher-risk stocks as investors rotate into steadier options. SoundHound AI and IonQ have been victims of this shift. However, that could change at a moment's notice if the market's appetite for risk rebounds.
That shift should occur eventually, but are these two buys right now?
Valuing these stocks is tricky
IonQ may have some revenue it's generating, but that's mostly coming from contracts rather than large-scale hardware sales. As a result, valuing IonQ using a traditional metric like the price-to-sales ratio (which today is a still-lofty 94) isn't a valid way to assess the stock. A better way to look at the stock is to consider its potential market opportunity and how much of a lead IonQ has in its effort to take a share of that market. Right now, IonQ has a fairly sizable lead over the competition, and one estimate pegs the annual quantum computing market opportunity at around $72 billion by 2035. That's huge potential, making IonQ a solid long-shot pick at its current market cap of around $10 billion.
SoundHound AI is actually bringing in sizable revenues, but it's not profitable. But the price-to-sales ratio is a valid way to value it -- and at 20 times sales, SoundHound AI isn't exactly cheap.
SOUN PS Ratio data by YCharts.
However, with its revenue growth rate topping 67% in its latest quarter, this seems like a solid risk-reward profile.
I think SoundHound AI and IonQ are on course for strong gains throughout the rest of 2026. While they may fall short of Wall Street expectations, if they excel in their respective industries, there could be even greater returns in their future.
