I caught up with VP of Sales at Speechmatics, Jeff Palmer, who told me about their recent Series A funding round led by AlbionVC. Palmer, who joined the Speechmatics team four months ago, shared how Speechmatics intends to use the funding, adding ‘we will double our staff this year.’
At its core, Speechmatics helps enterprises understand over 29 spoken languages through Artificial Intelligence and machine learning. Palmer said they already work in the broadcast media industry and provide real-time transcriptions for broadcast news. For enterprises, the automatic speech recognition business helps them leverage live and archived media. Speechmatics does so to shed light on how to best fine-tune business workflows where needed.
They even present an attractive offering for enterprises with call recordings, especially contact centers. By turning speech into text so agents can analyze audio content, Speechmatics can then use its transcription software to detect mood, tone, and customer sentiment. What happens, as a result, is that Speechmatics enables enterprises to enhance CX in real-time – creating an impactful business intelligence tool.
Speechmatics also tackles compliance, quality management, and event reconstruction. If there is ever a dispute in a contact center, its speech recognition engine lets end-users locate and replay stored recordings. This all brings me to today’s Series A funding news, which I see as a great move. Why? Because the money will bring Speechmatics’ powerful AI application to more parts of the world.
Speechmatics to Fund Global Expansion
According to Palmer, they plan to fund global expansion, to bring the Cambridge-based company’s speech recognition engine to a more global market. The hybrid solution is available in the cloud and on-premises – an area where Palmer said Speechmatics sees ‘great value’ because many companies have yet to fully migrate to the cloud so they rely on hybrid infrastructure.
“We’ve invested in our product and machine learning to provide customers with what we believe is the best speech recognition technology on the market”
Following the January appointment of CEO, John Milliken, the drive for global expansion comes as no surprise, as Milliken has long been an outspoken advocate for growth. The £6.35 million investment, Palmer said, will go toward product development and geographical expansion into the U.S., Czech Republic, and India.
Taking on Corporate-Social Responsibility
From our chat, I gathered the Speechmatics team was a dynamic group of developers, passionate about the responsibility that comes with developing advanced AI. This became more clear after I learned they won the Queen’s Award for Enterprise, coming out on top in the ‘Innovation’ division. Palmer acknowledged Speechmatics is aware of the level of responsibility that comes with what they do, adding ‘it is an area we remain passionate about.’
There are a ton of ways we can use such AI models for the greater good. We can provide real-time transcription for members of the deaf community for greater accessibility, for instance. I for one, think it will be fascinating to watch the Cambridge-based business to further enter the global automatic speech recognition market and see what innovations they introduce for enterprises and humanity to use.
