Ukrainian startup Respeecher, which creates digital models of human voices, has raised investments from several investors from the United States, Netherlands, and Ukraine. The lead investor was the New York-based ff Venture Capital. ICU and Acrobator funds also participated in the deal.
The company does not disclose the amount of the deal, as well as the company’s valuation. But it is known that the average amount of the investments from ffVC is up to $700,000, ICU Ventures, and Acrobator Ventures – up to $500,000 per deal.
About Respeecher
Respeecher was founded by Grant Reaber, Dmytro Belevtsov, and Oleksander Serdiuk in 2018. Currently, the company employs 9 people, and it plans to expand to 15 employees by the end of the year.
The development of the company allows you to change the voices and even reduce the accent. The product can be useful for movie production companies, or video game studios. Thus, for example, using the Respeecher product, understudies can dub movies or commercials with the voices of celebrities without their direct participation.
The product can also help restore past time celebrity voices from recordings of their speeches, for instance, for audiobooks or movies. In the video below, you can see how the technology works on the example of the voice of former U.S. President Barack Obama:
Respeecher already has experience of cooperation with a famous Hollywood studio and a British broadcaster. The company also plans to enter the call center market this year.
“This funding round gives us the opportunity to scale our business – to increase technical potential and sales, as well as to enter a new market,” Oleksander Serdiuk, CEO of Respeecher, says.
About the investors
ff Venture Capital is an American venture capital firm that specializes in providing seed-stage and early-stage funding to tech companies. Since its inception in 2008, the firm has financed more than 120 companies, the total worth of which are more than $7.6 billion.
ICU Ventures is a venture capital firm headquartered in Kyiv that invests in early-stage technology companies with Ukrainian and Eastern European roots. In addition to Respeecher, the ICU portfolio includes such companies with Ukrainian roots as Petcube, Apostera, 3DLook, Hideez.
Acrobator Ventures is a venture capital firm founded by Dutch business angel Bas Godska. The firm invests in startups at pre-seed, seed, and later stages from $50,000 to $500,000. The company has offices in Amsterdam and Kyiv.
