SpeakUnique
Voice banking solutions for all special needs.Speak Unique has developed cutting-edge speech synthesis, that is able to create personalised synthetic voices from only a short recording of an individual’s own voice or designed based on a set of desired characteristics.
2018
Start Date
Edinburgh
Location
8
Employees
£210k
Grants
£175k
Equity
The Journey
SpeakUnique was created in The University of Edinburgh. The founding management team includes Alice Smith, CEO, Oliver Watts (CTO and Speech Scientist) and Professor Siddharthan Chandran (Adviser and globally recognised neurologist). SpeakUnique has developed cutting-edge speech synthesis that is able to create personalised synthetic voices, from only a short recording of an individual’s own voice or designed based on a set of desired characteristics. The company offers four different Voice Banking services depending on clients’ speech needs. Following the Innovate UK ICURe programme, they formed a University of Edinburgh spin-out company to allow them to offer their technology at scale. In June 2020 they launched the first set of products, selling personalised synthetic voices to individuals. The company is now able to offer their voices to any English speaker, anywhere in the world.
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Began NxNW ICURe Cohort B
Completed NxNW ICURe Cohort B
Received £120K Innovate UK Funding
Received private investment of £175K
Began trading as Speak Unique
Monthly growth - sales exceeding target
What companies had to say about the Innovate UK ICURe programme?
Taking part in the ICURe journey was a great opportunity for me and the founding team. It enabled us to understand the scale of the problem that we were trying to address and the potential for the company, giving us the belief in ourselves and the products to actually set up the company and push towards launch.
Alice Smith
CEO, Speak Unique
Future Goals
A future goal of the team is to create the technology needed to provide polyglot personalised synthetic voices for use in communication aids, enabling bilingual users to ‘speak’ in either of their languages or in a seamless mixture of the two. Ultimately, this technology will drive a web service where users at risk of losing their voice can record a sample of speech in their own home, and can then download a personalised bilingual voice.
