A recent report on the global Internet of Things (IoT) market worldwide showed that it is projected to grow by $714.5B, with an estimated growth of 32.6%. This speed of growth makes it critical for businesses in this space to keep ahead of the game. Set to reach over $363.3B by the year 2025, Applications & Analytics will bring healthy gains adding significant momentum to global growth.
With Innovate UK investing in small-scale Internet of Things pioneers, the UK is among the world leaders in disrupting IoT tech and services. Cambridge, London and Liverpool are the emerging clusters for this fast-growing industry and overall the UK has strong capabilities in both the supply chain (high technology manufacturing, telecommunications and digital services) and the demand side (health and social care, transport, retail and utilities).
While the adoption of voice-activated technologies in smart homes and workplaces is on the rise, the accuracy of modern speech recognition systems remains severely limited in noisy environments. AudioTelligence, the company dedicated to making speech clear and intelligible, has raised $8.5M (£6.6M) in Series A funding from Octopus Ventures, Cambridge Innovation Capital, Cambridge Enterprise, and CEDAR Audio.
AudioTelligence’s technology acts like autofocus for sound, using data-driven blind audio signal separation to focus on the source of interest, allowing it to be separated from interference. This enables microphones to focus on what users are saying, improving the audio quality for listeners, regardless of background noise.
Valuable applications for AudioTelligence’s tech include voice assistants operating in noisy environments like call centres, smart speakers, smart TVs and set-top boxes where broadcast sound interferes with command recognition, and two-way telephony in noisy places.
“Voice command systems work reasonably well when the audio scene is quiet, but performance deteriorates rapidly once you have multiple people talking or when there’s background music. We’ve already seen some great results from real-world testing and this investment will fund further product development to ensure we can all communicate clearly with the next generation of smart consumer devices and each other. Our solution doesn’t need calibrating or training, and the code is production-ready – which means existing devices can be easily upgraded to AudioTelligence with no more than a software update.” - Ken Roberts, CEO and founder of AudioTelligence
With this $8.5M investment, AudioTelligence has ambitious plans to disrupt the $10B voice market by fuelling further breakthroughs, supporting new partnerships with technology providers, and tripling the team over the next three years.
“In today’s hyper-connected world voice-activated technologies are becoming increasingly prevalent, a trend we expect to continue. That’s why AudioTelligence’s technology is so exciting, as it drastically improves the accuracy and user experience of human-machine interactions. We are thrilled to be adding AudioTelligence to our growing Deep Tech portfolio and look forward to supporting the team on their growth journey as they continue to provide innovative solutions for their customers.” - Zoe Chambers, Early Stage Investor at Octopus Ventures
