AssemblyAI secures Series C worth $50M for speech AI model development

AssemblyAI has recently procured a significant $50M Series C funding round led by Accel, with valuable contributions from prominent individuals like Keith Block, former co-CEO Salesforce, and Nat Friedman, ex-GitHub CEO. This major investment has propelled AssemblyAI's total capital to an impressive $115M.

• Origin: Founded in 2017 by machine learning engineer Dylan Fox, AssemblyAI was motivated by Amazon Echo's application of AI systems for voice.

• AI Innovations: AssemblyAI offers advanced AI models intended for various tasks, including speech-to-text conversion, speaker identification, content moderation, and speech summarization, all accessible through a simple API.

• Funding Utilization: The fresh capital will be employed for the creation of a universal speech model—trained on over a petabyte of voice data—set to launch later this year. AssemblyAI also intends to increase its 115-person squad by 50% to 75% within the next year, boosting its operational capacity.

• Mission: AssemblyAI aspires to become the "Stripe for AI models", supplying top-tier AI via an intuitive API. This initiative allows customers to develop more vertical applications and internal workflows using the company's proprietary data, ushering in improvements in speech AI models.

AssemblyAI is making significant strides in the industry, serving over 25 million inference calls and processing over 10 terabytes of voice data daily through its API. Its clientele comprises industry-leading startups such as Fireflies.ai, Veed, TypeForm, Close, Loop Media, and CallRail.