Snips, an AI voice platform provider, raises $13 million Series A

Snips, an AI voice platform provider based in Paris and New York City, has raised $13 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Korelya Capital and MAIF Avenir, with participation from BPI France and previous backer Eniac Ventures. This brings the total amount raised by the startup to $21 million in the past two years.

In addition to the funding round, Snips announced the official launch of its Voice Platform for connected devices.

“Since 2013 we’ve been working toward putting AI in every device so we can make technology disappear,” said Dr. Rand Hindi, Snips CEO in a statement. “Today we are launching the first Private-by-Design voice platform that will allow all connected device makers to put voice interaction into their products, while truly protecting user privacy.”

According to the 2017 Voice Report, there will be approximately 2.5 billion voice-enabled devices in the market by 2021. With voice becoming the most popular medium for connected devices, Snips has been working to solve the problem of how humans and machines communicate with each other.

According to Snips, its platform can can generate large amounts of human-like data while maintaining privacy, and can communicate via five languages at launch.

The platform works using on-device Automated Speech Recognition (when a machine transcribes speech into text). Users can speak to their devices, asking a “query” that will be turned into text and then interpreted by the AI assistant.

The startup already has over 1,000 registered users on its platform, and is working with hardware partners including Lemon California to incorporate offline voice commands into Lemon’s solar powered, waterproof, wireless speakers.

“Lemon is extremely excited to partner with Snips and utilize their private-by-design voice platform,” said Vincent Dupontreué, Lemon California, CEO in a statement. “Our incredible teams are working together to power the new generation of voice interaction without relying on the internet or the cloud.“

Read more: PE Hub (Press release)