Ukrainian AI startup Respeecher, which creates voices for Hollywood and AAA games, has raised $1 million in pre-series A round of investment. Entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk, ffVC Poland, SID Venture Partners, Bad Ideas, and ICU funds joined the round. The funds raised will be used for scaling and further development of the ethical direction.
- Respeeсher became famous thanks to its recreation of the voices of Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker for the Star Wars series, and in 2023 — the voice of Victor Vector for Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty. The actor who voiced the character in the game died in 2021. Together with CD Project, the startup asked the actor’s family for permission to reproduce the voice in order to give fans a chance to hear the already familiar voice of the character again.
- Also, Respeecher recently announced that he will be recreating the voice of Edith Piaf for a Warner Music biopic.
- The startup is also implementing a project to popularize the Crimean Tatar language and the initiative Share UA Voices, which allowed world stars to support Ukrainians in Ukrainian.
- The recent investment will help the startup to continue transforming the service into a platform with a stronger ethical component. Currently, Respeeсher continues to expand the team and plans to strengthen several areas at once: technological uniqueness, voice marketplace, and communication products, in particular, assistance to patients with speech disorders.
“At the moment, some of the most exciting updates we are working on include real-time voice rendering, the ability to change speech accents for different types of communication, and localization. Also, we continue to do a project that only Respeecher can do in the world — recreation of voices in a quality that Hollywood respects, gradually becoming an increasingly important and reliable partner for both giants of original content and creators with very limited budgets,”
Oleksandr Serdiuk, co-founder and CEO of Respeecher, says.
- The startup enables one person to communicate with the voice of another through the use of AI. Speech-to-speech technology makes it possible to convey the entire emotional range of the speaker or voice actor, which is especially important in cinema.
- This technology also allows you to make a so-called cross-language translation — to speak in different languages with your own voice even if you do not speak that language, as in the video with Bear Grylls where he speaks Ukrainian.
- In addition to the B2B direction, the startup also has a SaaS solution — the voice marketplace. It helps democratize technology, make it more accessible to smaller content creators.
“Investing in an AI company is very obvious. This is an investment in the creative industry. But creativity is a challenge. And AI-powered voice technology is one of many ways to solve this problem and scale business. I loved that Respeecher knew how to do it with an ethical approach and Hollywood quality,”
Gary Vaynerchuk, investor and entrepreneur, says.
- During its previous round, the startup raised $3 million in funding from Techstars, Comcast, ffVC, Technexus, Acrobator, and ICU. Today, its total amount of raised investments is $4 million. The company’s head office is located in Kyiv, and the team currently consists of 50 people.
