SoundHound raised extra funds for its voice-enabled AI.
Despite the fact that SoundHound has been around for 10 years, the company managed to raise around $40 million in financing in order to build its conversational AI platform. However, thanks to a new round of financing, the company has added another $75 million to their budget.
If you are not familiar with SoundHound, then you should know that the company started out with an app meant to identify what song was playing. The app was downloaded more than 300 million times, and its success has led CEO Keyvan Mohajer to develop greater ambitions.
The company has shifted to the development of a massive conversational AI system similar to Amazon’s Alexa or the Google Assistant. For this endeavor, the firm was able to almost double its existing funds thanks to investors like Nvidia and Samsung Catalyst Fund.
The company already launched Hound, its version of a voice-enabled assistant for both Android and iOS during March of last year. SoundHound revealed that the app was the result of over 10 years of research and development, which allowed their product to compete giants like Google, Apple while also insulating it from future potential challengers.
The Hound AI was designed to able to understand increasingly complex statements and questions, with users being particularly interested in receiving answers to longer and longer questions rather than just follow-up queries like Siri’s functionality.
Since the launch of Hound, the market for voice assistants has dramatically increased. During CES 2017, an increasing number of electronic manufacturers decided to integrate virtual assistants like Alexa into their products like a smart fridge.
Mohajer has revealed that since the launch of their service, it has been integrated into more than 500 different products from more than 20,000 partners worldwide. These products range from robots and appliances to cars. However, SoundHound also hopes that the AI patterns at the core of their service will also make their way in more traditional types of media like text and images.
The company is also seeking to invest in the concept of collective AI, which would allow developers to benefit from already existing research and domains. This would facilitate the development process of new and original apps and features.
Image source: SoundHound
