Artificial intelligence is undoubtedly the hottest area of tech today, venture capital dollars are flowing into space at an extraordinary level.
Crunchbase data shows that within the wider space, the Voice AI startup has emerged as a standout, which attracts the attention of investors globally. In the last 12-18 months, several voice AI companies have seen their prices three times-which is indicative of accelerating market demand and accelerating long-term value.
An example of the Sound AI company that has seen a large -scale valuation jump this year is eleven labs, which allow creators, businesses and others to use AI software to copy sounds in dozens of languages. Startup, based in Brooklyn, New York, acquired the status of a unicorn with an increase of $ 80 million in Series B in January 2024, costing $ 3.3 billion a year later, led by Iconiq Capital and Anderson Horos. Other supporters include Sequrea Capital, Valor Equity Partners, New Enterprise Associates and Andure Catalists.
And on September 8, eleven labs announced that it would sell secondary shares to provide liquidity options for employees through a tender offer, which would double the company's price by $ 6.6 billion. In the LinkedIn post, Eleven Labels Carls Reena revealed that eleven labs had “approved $ 200 million in the ARR in 2.5 years.”
The pursuit of pursuit
The sound is also an attractive section for those who have received anecdotes. In July, Meta received the play, a startup that uses AI to produce human sound sounds, for unknown amounts. Established in 2023, Playy raised $ 5.1 million, according to the Crunch Base data.
According to an internal memo observed by Bloomberg, the play AI team's “work to create natural sounds, and a platform for Easy Voice created” Meta's work “work and roadmap, AI's characters, Meta AI, wear capable and audio content creation”.
Managing partner and head of Europe in GV, Tom Halm, believes that emerging voice AI companies are ready to achieve because companies may need speech text, text -to -speech, identification of intention and discussion, these abilities may take “years at home.”
“As the CEO realizes that natural language and sound are essential to supply the best product experience in the largest markets in the largest markets, they will often conclude that it is very fast to achieve proven technology and teams, so someone is expected to achieve opportunities.”
Controlled growth
According to Helm, when you look at the rapidly confluence of LLMS and real-time sound recognition, the growing investment in AI is not surprising when you look at several rapidly developing technologies-based technologies-based technologies.
“The identity of the speech is eventually gaining human level accuracy, LLM is better to understand the context, while the microphone is literally in every device and platform we use,” he said.
As a firm, GV has invested in several companies that fall into the Voice AI category, including nothing, neurillink, Voc.
Halm added, “One of the things that attracts us (these) companies … is the main belief of the founders as a user interface in natural language and voice.” “These companies are dealing with various pieces of communication computing puzzles, but they have the vision of humans to communicate with machines to make humans really natural and less friction.”
Another factor that makes the sound AI startup so attractive is that the natural language can be considered the main API of humans for development. And it includes understanding and communication of the world around us.
“WhatsApp users are sending millions of sound messages every day,” he said.
Beta Works colleague, Jordan Crook, said his firm had invested in models, middleware, applications, agents and even hardware because he belongs to AI. In particular, it supported Granola, an AI notepad that copies and summarizes meetings with your device.
He wrote via email, “As a subset of our portfolio, many of these companies are experiencing tail winds in use and ability.” “So it is clear that after more than a decade of TTS/STT (Text to Speech/Speech to Text), the current crop of the audio familiar model has used the original utility and mainstream of sound as an interface.”
Customer's conversation
Venture funds continue to increase to start all sizes of the Voice AI startups. In particular, customer support is a growing area.
Texas -based 24/7 AI -powered AI -powered phone system, Loman AI, recently announced that it had collected 3.5 million seed rounds headed by the next Coast Ventures.
The company says it has set up “tens of millions” since its inception of 2024. Loman said his AI iPhone agent “responds to every call”, fields and delivery orders, book reservations, guests' questions and is directly compatible with the leading POS and reservation system. It claims that the result is that the restaurant has more revenue from re -occupying calls and “smart apasles”, while labor costs also decrease.
In June, Mayon Egg, a startup that makes the Enterprise AI agent for customer support, led by Dell Technologies Capital to increased the Million 50 million Series B. Founded in 2023, a Boston -based company raised a total of $ 78 million in funds, according to the Crunchbase data. In a recent blog post, the founder and CTO Sami Shalbi wrote that the voice of Maon for direct calls “can understand the context and respond naturally in any situation.”
He added: “Maon Voice is also the first to bring voice AI in the preparation of the real world for a rapid response, more natural interaction and tone, which remains intact.”
A 'universal remote' for the digital world
Then there are companies working behind the scenes to help other AI companies increase their offer. An example of this is in the assembly, which is an applied AI startup that produces a text and audio intelligence model from modern speech. The purpose is to make the developers easier to add acoustic features to their apps, such as duplication and sound identity. For example, Voice AI apps such as granola and fireflies. AI uses assembly technology to strengthen its features.
Established in 2017, it has raised about $ 160 million to date, which contains crunch twenty figures. Backers include Wi -Combatin, Excel, Insight Partners and Smith Point Capital.
According to CEO and founder Dilin Fox, there are various types of use in assembly technology. This contact centers and sales teams are used to imitate and analyze customer calls, summarize conversations and detect important moments. As mentioned above, searching for its tech powers such as real -time subtitles, sound assistants and companies like Granola, Wade and Zoom. In a health care place, it automatically prepares the visiting notice of the patients with a recorded conversation. It also creates captions and transcripts for videos, podcasts and meetings.
“It is quite clear that the market has a great opportunity for what we are doing,” Fox told Crunchbase News. “In the first two years, the tech was bad, the market was small, and things really took time before clicking and gathering.
He added, “And there is still a huge area of things that is indiscriminately and unused, because the text is still not so good for many things.” “So there is still a lot of room to grow.”
According to Fox, on the company's platform, the company has thousands of paying users and more than half a million developers.
Looking forward, Fox believes that another major issue for assembly technology is a real -time voice agent that people can talk on phone and plug hardware.
“We work directly with companies like, and there are many in this place that are now ending,” he said.
For GV's Holm, one of the most interesting trends that he believes is that the sound of AI continues in the development of the AI is that “we are returning to the most natural form of human communication.”
After decades of technology, “technology is finally molding with us.”
“The sound and the natural language represents the ultimate leak hack, which is a democratic access to computational power for everyone who thinks and communicating,” Helm told Crunchbase News … It is worthwhile to keep an eye on it because the voice for the digital world is becoming a kind of universal remote. ” “Whether it's big tech companies or new startups, there are many players who joke for benefits in the conversation layer.”
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