Deepgram, a company that develops voice-recognition tech for the enterprise, today raised $47 million in new funding. An extension of Deepgram's Series B that kicked off in February 2021, led by Tiger Global, it brings the startup's total raised to $86 million.
Despite the challenging market conditions, Deepgram achieved its highest-ever pre and post-money valuation. He wouldn't say what the valuation was. Deepgram is in a good position to thrive in this tough environment. The demand for speech understanding is growing as companies seek greater efficiency.
Deepgram was founded in 2015 to build custom voice-recognition solutions for customers. Data scientists at the company source, create, label and evaluate speech data to create speech-recognition models that can understand brands and jargon, capture an array of languages and accents, and adapt to challenging audio environments. Deepgram created a model to record communications between NASA and the International Space Station.
One of the largest undiscovered data sources is audio data. It is difficult to use in its audio format because audio is an unstructured data type. It is possible for companies to send hundreds of thousands of hours of customer audio to be transcribed and analyzed.
The audio data to train Deepgram's models comes from somewhere. He did not deny that Deepgram uses customer data to improve its systems. He pointed out that the company complies with the law and allows users to request the deletion of their data.
Some of the data submitted by our users is used to train Deepgram's models. Machine learning systems can produce human-like results by using training models on real-world data. We allow our users to decide if they want their data used for training.
The platform can be used to build voice-based automations and customer experiences. Deepgram offers on-premises deployment options that allow customers to manage and process data locally. The CIA has supported Deepgram in the past.
A source says that the speech-recognition market could be worth $48 billion by the year 2030. Tech giants like Microsoft and Amazon offer real-time voice transcription and caption services, as do startup companies like Voicera and Verbit.
There are obstacles to overcome for the tech. According to a report by Speechmatics, 29% of executives have observed bias in voice technologies due to the use of artificial intelligence. Deepgram's gross margins are in line with top-performing software businesses, and the demand is strong enough to prop up the rest of the vendors.
The consumer voice-recognition market has taken a turn for the worse in recent months. According to reports, Amazon is on track to lose $10 billion this year. There are rumors that the development of the Google Assistant will be cut in favor of more profitable projects.
In the last few months, Deepgram has focused on on-the-fly language translation, sentiment analysis and split transcripts. The company now has over 300 customers and 15000 users.
$10 million in free speech-recognition credits is offered by the Deepgram startup program, which was launched on the hunt for new business. Firms that participate don't have to pay a fee and can use the funds in conjunction with their existing benefits.
Deepgram's business is growing fast. There hasn't been a reduction in demand for Deepgram. Businesses are looking for ways to cut costs and give humans more time to focus on interesting, consequential work. Reducing large cloud compute costs by changing big cloud transcription to Deepgram's product is one example of this.
There are 146 employees in Deepgram's offices in Ann arbor and San Francisco. When asked about hiring for the rest of the year, he didn't say anything because he didn't want to commit to a firm number.
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