Voci talks about $8m series B

Voci Technologies, a US-based language processing spinout from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), closed an $8m series B round on Monday co-led by venture capital firms Grotech Ventures and Harbert Growth Partners.
Founded in 2006, Voci has developed artificial intelligence and deep learning-based speech recognition technology that helps companies improve their customer-facing operation.
The technology boasts speech-to-text transcription and voice analytics capabilities, and can extract details such as gender, sentiment, emotion and speaker biometrics. Voci claims it can process 150 hours of speech within one hour using a single rack unit on a standard server.
Voci will spend the capital on sales and marketing efforts. The company is based on ten years of research at Carnegie Mellon University, whose speech experts continue to support Voci along with counterparts from University of Illinois.
Voci had previously disclosed approximately $9.9m in equity and debt financing, including $1m in seed funding provided by Pittsburgh Equity Partners, BlueTree Allied Angels and private investors in 2014.
Anthony Gadient chief executive of Voci Technologies, said: “We are thrilled to be partnering with Grotech and Harbert. This influx of capital will accelerate our goal of being the world’s premier solution for speech-to-text transcription in terms of capacity, quality and scalability.”