FUSE is a venture capital firm focusing on early-stage software companies. The firm primarily invests in Seattle-based seed and Series A companies.

FUSE

Voyager Capital is a leading Pacific Northwest venture firm providing entrepreneurs with the resources, experience and connections to build successful technology companies. Voyager leads first venture round investments in software, analytics and cloud infrastructure startups, deploying the firm's domain expertise, go-to-market and team building resources help build market leaders. The firm has offices in Seattle, Washington and Portland, Oregon.

Voyager Capital

Qualcomm Ventures is the investment arm of Qualcomm Incorporated. Founded in 2000, Qualcomm Ventures is a corporate venture capital fund with over 150 active portfolio companies and more than 20 exits over a billion dollars, including 99 Taxis, Cruise Automation, Fitbit, Invensense, NQ Mobile, Waze, and more. As a global investor, Qualcomm Ventures helps connect entrepreneurs to the resources, relationships, and deep industry expertise they need to succeed in the mobile technology ecosystem.

Qualcomm Ventures

Good Friends help founders develop strong foundations for their businesses. Good Friends is a venture capital firm that was started in 2019 by the founders of Warby Parker, Harry's, and Allbirds. Good Friends invests in early-stage businesses with a consumer lens.

Good Friends

WellSaid Labs

WellSaid Labs is a developer of art text-to-speech technology that creates life-like synthetic voices, from the voices of real people. The company's patent-pending technology allows them to recreate any voice imaginable and generate speech with the same pitch, emphasis, and intonation as the source speaker - As if they’d spoken it themselves.

WellSaid Labs is a generative AI text-to-speech platform. The platform offers a voiceover creation studio, and an API for integration with products and services, such as enterprise training and customer service platforms. Customers can choose from a range of AI voices based on style, gender, and the type of content the voice-over will be used for. WellSaid’s pre-generated voices are licensed from real people, but the platform also offers customers the ability to create their own voice avatars. In February 2024, the company launched <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/26614">HINTS </a>(Highly Intuitive Naturally Tailored Speech) technology which allows users to shape the performance of AI voices.

Exploring the limitless possibilities of AI

Generative AI Applications

WellSaid Labs: How This Company Is Using AI To Drive Human Parity In Voice

WellSaid Labs is a generative AI text-to-speech platform. The platform offers a voiceover creation studio, and an API for integration with products and services, such as enterprise training and customer service platforms. Customers can choose from a range of AI voices based on style, gender, and the type of content the voice-over will be used for. WellSaid’s pre-generated voices are licensed from real people, but the platform also offers customers the ability to create their own voice avatars. In February 2024, the company launched <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/26614">HINTS </a>(Highly Intuitive Naturally Tailored Speech) technology which allows users to shape the performance of AI voices.Some of WellSaid’s use cases include:1) Corporate training: Allows the creation of voiceovers for learning and development content without being subject to voice actor availability, with instant edits. The platform also allows customers to define pronunciation for industry-specific terms and jargon.2) Products and experiences: Integration of text-to-speech or voice avatars into a customer’s products via WellSaid’s API3) Advertising: Quickly and easily generates voiceovers for advertising, using custom or pre-generated voices4) Video production: Integrates into video production workflows, with real-time collaboration and custom voicesWellSaid offers a free tier and several premium tiers, along with an enterprise package offering high-grade data security, minimal downtime, and collaborative tools.Key customers and partnershipsAs of May 2023, WellSaid Lab’s customers included Boeing, Snowflake Five9, Intel, Peloton, Decibel, Powtoon, Squarespace, and Adswiss.In May 2023, WellSaid Labs partnered with Videate, an AI video generation platform, to bring AI voices together with an advanced video automation platform, allowing Videate users to create automatically generated software how-to videos with natural-sounding AI voices from WellSaid Labs.

DeckRobot is a platform compatible with Microsoft PowerPoint that leverages AI to transform raw slides into enterprise-ready presentations. DeckRobot AI transforms draft slides into professional, on-brand slides by adapting graphics from a vast library of slide examples. Users can apply an unlimited number of styles to any slide deck, including old documents, client materials, or web-sourced slides.DeckRobot offers enhancements for individual slides, such as adding approved icons and images, object alignment, slide resizing, and text validation through AI checks. DeckRobot's plugin acts as a time-saving tool for PowerPoint users, reducing manual work and potentially saving up to 80% of working time. The plugin emphasizes creating visually appealing presentations that adhere to company brand guidelines while maintaining content quality.Key customers and partnershipsAs of April 2024, the company reportedly worked with 70% of the largest consulting and audit companies.

DeckRobot

Based in Italy, Contents.com is a generative AI-powered multimedia creation tool directed at marketing teams, bloggers, publishers, web agencies, ecommerce sites, and large corporations looking to scale content output. The company operates as a SaaS platform that provides tools to support the entire content creation workflow, combining AI-generated output with manual finishing. Contents.com’s features include:1) Industry trends: Uses AI to provide an overview of popular content trends during a specified time period2) AI Chat: A natural language chatbot that can answer questions on any topic or be used to generate content ideas3) AI Writer: Generates content based on a selected template, including blog posts, social media posts, product descriptions, marketing emails, search engine optimized content, and summarized and rephrased content4) AI Art: Generates images based on text inputs, a selected style, and destination content type5) Text to Audio: Converts text documents into audio, with several AI voices available for selection and generates text transcripts from audio input6) AI Translation: Translates content into 25+ languages (January 2024) and offers human translation7) Professional writing services: Completion and review of AI-generated content or fully outsourced content creation by human writersContents.com also offers a customizable enterprise solution, enabling large organizations to automate their content creation processes.The firm claims that its solution can generate content 10x faster.In April 2023, Contents.com acquired Scribeur, its main French competitor, expanding its customer base to include major French and European brands. In the same month, the firm also acquired translation company Traduzione.it. In addition, in May 2023, the company acquired Scribox, an Italian content marketing marketplace, to leverage Scribox's expertise in custom content creation, SEO, and social media marketing.Key customers and partnershipsAs of May 2023, Contents.com’s users included Allianz, Billboard, IKEA, Oppo, and Accenture.

Contents.com

Estonia-based Alpha3D utilizes GenAI technologies to allow users to automatically convert text prompts or 2D images of real-world objects into interactive 3D digital assets. The platform aims at simplifying the 3D model creation process, making it more accessible and scalable for users regardless of their 3D-modeling knowledge. Alpha3D's technology has potential applications in various domains, such as augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), virtual try-on (VTO), gaming, the metaverse, and even non-fungible tokens (NFTs), allowing a wide range of digital interactions and experiences​.The platform claims to automatically generate 3D content 10x faster and up to 100x cheaper than traditional methods, without requiring 3D modeling expertise.Key customers and partnershipsAs of September 2023, Alpha3D had managed to garner a user base of nearly 100,000 platform users, including Viva Technology, Threedium, Wanna, PwC, and FARFETCH.In June 2023, the company partnered with Tryme, a company specializing in custom software solutions, to advance the creation of AI-generated 3D models for eyewear by combining Alpha3D's rapid 2D-to-3D conversion with TRYME's virtual try-on platform.

Alpha3D

OASIS is a human-centric AI research lab that offers photorealistic AI avatars for remote work. Users can enter text, record audio, or write directly on the screen, and the AI will rewrite based on specified preferences or settings, allowing users to generate rewritten content for various purposes, such as improving clarity, style, or readability. The cross-platform app allows users to use the AI avatar when using a camera, including Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, FaceTime, and WhatsApp.

OASIS

Canada-based Maket specializes in utilizing GenAI to automate the design of residential floor plans, aiding architects, designers, and developers in efficiently creating various design iterations​. Additionally, Maket offers a suite of tools, including a virtual assistant for informed desig-making, assistance with navigating zoning codes, and regulatory compliance checks. The platform is also integrated with Rhino, Autodesk Autocad, and Autodesk Revit.Key customers and partnerships&nbsp;In April 2022, Maket formed a strategic partnership with <a href="https://mila.quebec/en/mila-and-maket-announce-a-new-partnership-to-leverage-ai-for-generative-architecture/#:~:text=MONTREAL%20%E2%80%93%20April%2020%2C%202022,architecture%2C%20engineering%20and%20construction">Mila</a>, a deep-learning research institute, to advance AI-powered architectural planning​.Key competitors: None comparable (Maket is the only design startup we have identified that uses GenAI to automate the design of residential floor plans.)

Maket

Companies that offer solutions to generate text from a prompt, where output is independent of previous interactions, such as specialized content creation tools

Companies that offer solutions to create and edit images and GIFs, including techniques such as inpainting, outpainting, upscaling, and stylizing

Companies that generate or synthesize voice and audio, including voice cloning, text-to-speech, and language translation

Companies that specialize in generating 3D content, including the creation of game assets (virtual worlds, non-playable characters), product visualization, and other 3D models

Companies that offer solutions to create and edit video content, including scene generation, background replacement, stylizing, and frame interpolation

Companies that offer solutions to generate contextually relevant text responses across multiple conversational exchanges, such as natural language chatbots

Generative AI applications are built on foundation models that are trained using advanced ML models

The technology allows the creation of digital avatars and virtual games

All companies within the space offer a product or service based on generative AI

The technology allows the creation of personalized content

Some applications leverage NLP to train models to process and respond to language-based prompts

Generative AI applications are built on in-house or third-party foundation models

ANALYST_QUICK_TAKE

PROMINENT_CATEGORY

<div>
 
 WellSaid Labs, an AI voice firm, has launched a new technology called HINTS (Highly Intuitive Naturally Tailored Speech). It lets users manipulate the performance of AI voices, comparable to a movie director guiding actors.
 HINTS' primary features are its ability to allow precise adjustments and provide a context awareness enabling layered annotations over long scripts. Users can reduce a section's speed by exactly 0.7x or raise its volume by 5 dB, with AI voice responding organically.
 
</div> Analyst QuickTake: 
 The introduction of this technology aims to make AI voices more customizable and director-focused, expanding the creative possibilities for voice-based content. HINTS is expected to improve accuracy and naturalness in AI voices and could offer new opportunities in audiobooks, training narrations, and marketing videos.

WellSaid Labs

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