Soapbox Labs, a developer of speech-recognition technology for literacy tools for children, has raised $6.5 million in a Series A round from Elkstone Capital, Astia and a group of private investors.
The company has now raised a total of €10.2 million (approx. US $11.1 million), reports The Irish Times.
Founded in 2013, Soapbox Labs licenses its proprietary voice technology for use in software developed by other companies and organizations to address literacy and language-learning skills. The Dublin, Ireland-based company has captured thousands of hours of audio samples from children across 170 countries, and says its database can accurately capture a wide range of accents, dialects and other idiosyncrasies of children’s speech.
“With this funding we’re poised to capitalise on our strengths and the global market opportunities opening up to us in literacy, language learning and toys,” SoapBox Labs CEO Patricia Scanlon said in a prepared statement.
The company recently offered app developers three months of free API access to its voice tools. It is also part of a literacy research program, in partnership with Florida State University, where its technology will be used for thousands of students in grades K-2 across the United States.
