The voice world keep getting the monies. Bespoken announced yesterday that it raised 2.4 million dollars in seed funding round. Bespoken, a developer focused tool we featured as a voice resource a couple of weeks ago in our newsletter, allows you to test and monitor your Alexa skills. They have extensive documentation, if you are a developer you know what i’m talking about, that’s a rare thing to find in services. Overall we think it’s a great tool, check our newsletter for our review. Along with Sensible object, the company that developed Alexa skills for board games, featuring their first game When In Rome, recently also announced a similar raise, Storyline that raised 770k, all happening in a span of a few weeks, proving investors betting on voice. Comes with no surprise to us, we have been saying it: voice is the future first interface for computers. The Wall Street Journal published an article yesterday All Ears: Always-On Listening Devices Could Soon Be Everywhere, describing how tiny microphones are moving us to a world where your trash can can respond to voice commands. The good news for the privacy concerned is that these microphones are not connected to the cloud, and thus they are not sending information back. One of such companies, Vesper Technologies, Inc.—which has received money from Baidu, Bose and Amazon’s Alexa Fund, claims unique capabilities in their microphone, like understanding your voice even in windy conditions, and drawing zero power when awaiting a “wake word,” since sound itself generates the power the microphone needs. Bottom line, voice is moving fast in investment and smart assistants is not the only market for voice applications. This opens the doors for a world where everything with power or a battery can respond to voice commands. Let that sink in and we’ll talk tomorrow.
This is the link to Wall Street Journal article we referenced:
