Voice transcription startup company, Otter.AI, announced Thursday, February 25, 2021, that it had successfully raised $50 million in a Series B funding round. According to Venture Beat, the investment round includes $10 million in convertible notes.
The Series B investment round was led by Spectrum Equity. Apart from Spectrum Equity, there were other existing investors who took part in the said funding round. These included the likes of Draper Associates, Draper Dragon Fund, GGV Capital, Horizons Ventures, and many others, notes Tech Crunch.
Founded in 2016 by chief executive officer Sam Liang and Vice President of engineering Yun Fu, Otter.ai specialized in providing users with a means to record their meetings both online and through the use of an app.
In addition to this, Tech Crunch notes that one of the most helpful services provided by Otter.ai only came at the height of the global health crisis and people were dealing with the effects of the virus pandemic.
This is the Zoom integration feature that came about in April of 2020. The said feature was launched amid companies and workers alike leveraging Zoom for meetings and calls for web conferencing needs.
Through its artificial intelligence technology, Venture Beat states that Otter.ai can not only distinguish between the various speakers in question, but its system can also generate unique footprints that allow it to designate speakers based on the patterns given.
Tech Crunch, on the other hand, states that artificial intelligence technology allows for the system to determine what is being said by spending time learning more about the topics, zoning in on the intonation of voices, as well as factoring in the general sentiment of the people as they converse.
As transcriptions are processed, these are stored not only in Otter.ai’s mobile application but also on the web and in Dropbox. Transcriptions can be perused and shared accordingly with other individuals.
In a statement to Venture Beat, a company spokesperson said, “Otter’s high accuracy is a result of the algorithms that enable the app to learn. These were especially focused in the early days on English speakers with a variety of accents – regional within the U.S. and also optimized to address accents like Liang’s and the billions of English speakers on the planet.”
Following the funding injection, the company intends to use some of the investment towards its recruitment program. It plans to double down in hiring front-end and back-end engineers, data engineers, a VP of sales, and many more.
Apart from this, Tech Crunch notes that Otter.ai will also use its funds for promoting its app and services on various social media channels and networks.
