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SoundHound

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Not to be confused with SoundCloud.
SoundHound Inc.
Company typePrivately held company
Industry
FoundedSeptember 2005; 19 years ago (2005-09)
FounderKeyvan Mohajer, Majid Emami, James Hom
HeadquartersSanta Clara, CA, United States
Key people
Keyvan Mohajer (CEO)
Tim Stonehocker (CTO)
Products
  • SoundHound
  • Hound
  • Houndify
Number of employees
327 (2019)[1]
Websitewww.soundhound.com Edit this at Wikidata

SoundHound Inc. is an audio and speech recognition company founded in 2005. It develops voice-recognition, natural language understanding, sound-recognition and search technologies. Its featured products include Houndify, a Voice AI developer platform, Hound, a voice-enabled digital assistant, and music recognition mobile app SoundHound. The company’s headquarters are in Santa Clara, California.[2] SoundHound won the 2020 Webby Award for Productivity (Voice) in the category Apps, Mobile & Voice.[3]

History

The company was founded in 2005 by Keyvan Mohajer, a Ph.D. candidate at Stanford studying speech recognition. In 2009, the company's Midomi app was rebranded as SoundHound.[4] In 2012, SoundHound announced it had over 100 million users globally.[5] In 2014, SoundHound became the first music-search product available as a wearable.[6] Later, SoundHound became the first music recognition service shipping in autos, in a partnership with Hyundai, in the new 2015 Genesis.[7] By May 2016, SoundHound had over 300 million users globally.[8] In 2018, SoundHound Inc. announced partnerships with Hyundai, Mercedes-Benz, and Honda to provide voice interaction for their products using its Houndify voice AI platform.[9][10][11]

Funding

According to an article of June 2015 SoundHound Inc. had raised a total of $40 million in funding from Global Catalyst Partners, Translink Capital, Walden Venture Capital, and other investors.[12] This included $7 million in a Series B funding round the company secured in October 2008, bringing total funds raised to $12 million at this time. The round was led by TransLink Capital with the participation of JAIC America and Series A investor Global Catalyst Partners. In 2009 it attracted additional funding from Larry Marcus at Walden Venture Capital, who had previously invested in music startups Pandora and Snocap. The $4 million funding round was led by Walden Venture Capital VII, with the participation of an unnamed device manufacturer.[13]

In January 2017, the company raised another $75 million in an investment round that included Nvidia, Samsung, Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, and others.[14]

Announced in May 2018, SoundHound raised $100 million from a funding round led by Tencent and joined by Daimler AG, Hyundai Motors, Midea Group, and Orange S.A.[15] With this funding, the valuation of the company reached $1 billion.[16]

See also

References

  1. ^ "SoundHound Company Profile". Craft. Retrieved 21 November 2019.
  2. ^ May, Patrick (3 June 2013). "Siri's got nothing on SoundHound's new app". The Mercury News. Retrieved 1 March 2016.
  3. ^ Kastrenakes, Jacob (20 May 2020). "Here are all the winners of the 2020 Webby Awards". The Verge. Retrieved 22 May 2020.
  4. ^ Rollison, Damian (27 January 2010). "Tune identifier SoundHound announces new version with Pandora, tour dates". Venturebeat. Retrieved 1 March 2016.
  5. ^ "SCREENVISION ACTIVATES SOUNDHOUND PARTNERSHIP TO CONNECT MOBILE MOVIEGOERS TO BIG SCREEN ADS | Screenvision".
  6. ^ "SoundHound First Music Discovery Service to Be Live on Wearables | Business Wire". www.businesswire.com. Retrieved 2015-06-05.
  7. ^ "Hyundai and Kia tap SoundHound to help you identify music in your car". Engadget. Retrieved 2015-06-05.
  8. ^ "SoundHound now lets you use your voice to find music on the road | VentureBeat".
  9. ^ "Hyundai Motor Collaborates with SoundHound Inc. to Develop 'Intelligent Personal Agent' Voice-Control Technology". HYUNDAI MOTORS. Retrieved 2019-02-09.
  10. ^ "First-look into a new Infotainment System from Mercedes-Benz, MBUX, powered with voice-enabled AI from SoundHound Inc". MBRDNA. 2018-09-14. Retrieved 2019-02-09.
  11. ^ "Honda R&D Innovations, Inc. | SoundHound Inc. and Honda Partner on Development of a Voice-Enabled AI Assistant". Retrieved 2019-02-09.
  12. ^ Winkler, Rolf (2015-06-02). "SoundHound App Emerges to Take On Apple and Google in Voice Search". Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on 2015-06-12. Retrieved 2016-03-01.
  13. ^ Wauters, Robin (25 August 2011). "Music Search Startup SoundHound Partners With Spotify For Instant Streaming". TechCrunch. Retrieved 1 March 2016.
  14. ^ Yeung, Ken (2017-01-31). "SoundHound raises $75 million to expand access to its Houndify voice-powered platform". VentureBeat.com. VentureBeat. Retrieved 2017-01-31.
  15. ^ Lynley, Matthew (2018-05-03). "SoundHound has raised a big $100M round to take on Alexa and Google Assistant". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2018-09-21.
  16. ^ Schleifer, Theodore (2018-01-24). "SoundHound, once just a music-recognition app, is now a billion dollar company". recode. Retrieved 2018-09-21.
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