Cambridge-based speed recognition tech scaleup Speechmatics, has raised $62 million in Series B funding. The round was led by a leading US investor Susquehanna Growth Equity along with participation from UK investors AlbionVC (which backed RegGenome and TransFICC) and IQ Capital.
Global expansion on cards
The round will be used to support global expansion and add further firepower to Speechmatics‘ research, development, and tech expansion. It will support growth and the development of its speech recognition engine, which is touted to be the most accurate and inclusive in the market globally.
Katy Wigdahl, CEO, Speechmatics, said, “Our progress in the last few years left us inundated with interest from investors for our Series B fundraise. We chose to work with Susquehanna Growth Equity because they have a fantastic global footprint and a history of supporting significant growth in software businesses. The team is smart and ambitious but also pragmatic which is critical in this environment.”
Robert Whitby-Smith, Partner at AlbionVC, said, “Our view is voice will become the increasingly dominant human-machine interface and Speechmatics are the category leaders in applying deep learning to speech, with category defining accuracy and understanding across industry use-case and requirements. We have witnessed the impressive growth of the team and product over the last few years since our Series A investment in 2019 and as responsible investors we are delighted to support the company’s inclusive mission to understand every voice globally.”
Ed Stacey, Managing Partner at IQ Capital said, “Since investing in the seed round we’ve supported Speechmatics to become a world-leading company that is revolutionising how speech technology is being used – continuously driving AI and machine learning breakthroughs whilst rolling out a product that simply works in every industry use case in which it’s been tried. We’re delighted to continue backing this very talented team as part of the new investment round.”
Appoints new board member
Jonathan Klahr, the Managing Director of Susquehanna Growth Equity, will join the Speechmatics board.
Klahr said, “The Speechmatics team are undoubtedly a different pedigree of technologists. We started tracking Speechmatics when our portfolio companies told us that again and again Speechmatics win on accuracy against all the other options including those coming from ‘Big Tech’ players. We are primed to work with the team to ensure that more companies can get exposed to and adopt this superior technology.”
Accurate speech-to-text engine
Founded in 2006 by Tony Robinson in Cambridge, Speechmatics has built the most accurate and inclusive speech-to-text engine available in the world. It aims to understand every voice regardless of the speakers’ demographic, age, gender, accent, dialect, or location.
Speechmatics speech-to-text engine is trained through exposure to hundreds of thousands of individual voices using millions of hours of unlabelled, more representative voice data that does not require human intervention. This has enabled a paradigm shift in accuracy, particularly for non-English languages, dramatically reducing both AI bias and errors in speech recognition.
Already, the Speechmatics engine understands 34 languages for live and pre-recorded media. It has features, including advanced punctuation and entity formatting. It works customers and partners in any industry via the cloud, and hybrid. Its clientele includes 3Play Media, Veritone, Deloitte UK, Vonage, and government departments across the world.
