If you owned shares of Veritone Inc. (VERI) on Friday morning, you probably had a rough start to your day. The stock was down more than 8% in premarket trading, a classic market reaction to a company saying, "Hey, our near-term results are going to be worse than we—and everyone else—thought."

Here's what happened: Veritone issued a bunch of preliminary financial updates, and the numbers for the quarter and year that just ended weren't pretty. The company cut its fourth-quarter revenue guidance to a range of $18.1 million to $30.0 million. That's down quite a bit from its prior forecast of $33.4 million to $39.4 million and below the consensus estimate of $34.286 million that analysts were expecting.

On the earnings side, it's a similar story of wider losses. Veritone expects a fourth-quarter loss per share of 41 cents to 28 cents, which is notably worse than the street view of an 18-cent loss. The outlook for the full fiscal year 2025 doesn't look much better. The company projected an EPS loss of $1.75 to $1.56, compared with analyst estimates of a $1.50 loss.

And for the full year's top line? Veritone lowered its fiscal 2025 revenue outlook to $93.7 million to $105.6 million. That's down from its earlier guidance of $109 million to $115 million and, you guessed it, below the $109.485 million consensus estimate. When a company misses its own guidance and then misses the Street's numbers too, investors tend to sell first and ask questions later.

But it wasn't all doom and gloom in the announcement. The company did have some positive news to share about its core business. Veritone said its Veritone Data Refinery (VDR) business exited fiscal 2025 with more than $50 million in new bookings during the fourth quarter alone, supported by what it called a "near-term pipeline" as of December 31. The company also ended the year with $27.4 million in cash and cash equivalents and $45.6 million in convertible debt on its balance sheet.

Perhaps trying to soften the blow of the financial guidance, Veritone also announced a separate, significant piece of news: a multi-year strategic partnership with tech giant Oracle Corp (ORCL). The collaboration aims to migrate Veritone's AI solutions over to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). The idea, as these partnerships often go, is to improve scalability, security, and performance for enterprise AI deployments.

"Through this partnership with Oracle, we are strengthening our leadership in managing unstructured data and complex, multi-model AI workflows," said Ryan Steelberg, CEO of Veritone. It's a logical move. Partnering with a cloud infrastructure behemoth like Oracle can lend credibility and provide the technical backbone for a smaller AI software company trying to sell into large enterprises.

And then, looking beyond the current mess, Veritone tried to give investors a reason to stick around. The company issued its first peek at fiscal 2026, providing revenue guidance of $130 million to $145 million. The midpoint of that range is above the $130.4 million consensus estimate, suggesting management believes this is a temporary setback, not a permanent decline.

CEO Ryan Steelberg struck an optimistic tone about the future. "We believe that our improved balance sheet, expanding VDR pipeline, and continued momentum in the public sector positions us to capture significant opportunities across the AI and data economy," he said. "As we look ahead to 2026, our focus remains on growing our platform, deepening customer adoption, and delivering results through the scaled tokenization of unstructured data."

So, the narrative Veritone is pushing is clear: Yes, we stumbled recently, but we have a strong partnership, a promising pipeline, and a much better year ahead. The market's initial reaction, however, was focused squarely on the stumbles. Veritone shares were down 8.05% at $2.40 during premarket trading on Friday.

It's a classic setup for a volatile trading day. On one side, you have the cold, hard numbers showing a significant guidance cut. On the other, you have a promising partnership and an optimistic forecast for the year after next. Investors now have to decide which story they believe more.