SoundHound

SoundHound Inc. is an audio and speech recognition company founded in 2005. It develops speech 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]

Not to be confused with SoundCloud.

SoundHound Inc.
TypePrivately held company
Industry
FoundedSeptember 2005 (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

History

The company was founded in 2005 by Keyvan Mohajer, an Iranian-Canadian computer scientist who had founded a number of dot com ventures before starting SoundHound.[3][4]

In 2009, the company's Midomi app was rebranded as SoundHound but is still available as a web version on midomi.com.[5] In 2012, SoundHound announced it had over 100 million users globally.[6] In 2014, SoundHound became the first music-search product available as a wearable.[7]

In 2015, SoundHound became the first music recognition service shipping in autos, in a partnership with Hyundai, in the new Genesis model.[8]

By May 2016, SoundHound had over 300 million users globally.[9]

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.[10][11][12]

SoundHound won the 2020 Webby Award for Productivity (Voice) in the category Apps, Mobile & Voice.[13] In June of that year, the company announced partnerships with Snap Inc. as the technology behind Voice Scan in the Snapchat app, and Mastercard to voice-enable their new Drive Through solutions.[14][15]

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.[16] 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.[17]

In January 2017, the company raised another $75 million in an investment round that included Nvidia, Samsung, Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, and others.[18]

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.[19] With this funding, the valuation of the company reached $1 billion.[20]

See also

References
  1. "SoundHound Company Profile". Craft. Retrieved November 21, 2019.
  2. May, Patrick (June 3, 2013). "Siri's got nothing on SoundHound's new app". The Mercury News. Retrieved March 1, 2016.
  3. Keyvan Mohajer on CrunchBase
  4. "Keyvan Mohajer, Soundhound Inc: Profile and Biography". Bloomberg.com. February 7, 2019. Retrieved December 2, 2020.
  5. Rollison, Damian (January 27, 2010). "Tune identifier SoundHound announces new version with Pandora, tour dates". Venturebeat. Retrieved March 1, 2016.
  6. "SCREENVISION ACTIVATES SOUNDHOUND PARTNERSHIP TO CONNECT MOBILE MOVIEGOERS TO BIG SCREEN ADS | Screenvision".
  7. "SoundHound First Music Discovery Service to Be Live on Wearables | Business Wire". www.businesswire.com. Retrieved June 5, 2015.
  8. "Hyundai and Kia tap SoundHound to help you identify music in your car". Engadget. Retrieved June 5, 2015.
  9. "SoundHound now lets you use your voice to find music on the road | VentureBeat".
  10. "Hyundai Motor Collaborates with SoundHound Inc. to Develop 'Intelligent Personal Agent' Voice-Control Technology". HYUNDAI MOTORS. Retrieved February 9, 2019.
  11. "First-look into a new Infotainment System from Mercedes-Benz, MBUX, powered with voice-enabled AI from SoundHound Inc". MBRDNA. September 14, 2018. Retrieved February 9, 2019.
  12. "Honda R&D Innovations, Inc. | SoundHound Inc. and Honda Partner on Development of a Voice-Enabled AI Assistant". Retrieved February 9, 2019.
  13. Kastrenakes, Jacob (May 20, 2020). "Here are all the winners of the 2020 Webby Awards". The Verge. Retrieved May 22, 2020.
  14. "Snap Inc. Announces New Camera and Augmented Reality Experiences". www.businesswire.com. June 11, 2020. Retrieved November 17, 2020.
  15. "Mastercard Launches Frictionless Retail Technology Solutions to Enable Touchless Economy". mastercardcontentexchange.com. Retrieved November 17, 2020.
  16. Winkler, Rolf (June 2, 2015). "SoundHound App Emerges to Take On Apple and Google in Voice Search". Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on June 12, 2015. Retrieved March 1, 2016.
  17. Wauters, Robin (August 25, 2011). "Music Search Startup SoundHound Partners With Spotify For Instant Streaming". TechCrunch. Retrieved March 1, 2016.
  18. Yeung, Ken (January 31, 2017). "SoundHound raises $75 million to expand access to its Houndify voice-powered platform". VentureBeat.com. VentureBeat. Retrieved January 31, 2017.
  19. Lynley, Matthew (May 3, 2018). "SoundHound has raised a big $100M round to take on Alexa and Google Assistant". TechCrunch. Retrieved September 21, 2018.
  20. Schleifer, Theodore (January 24, 2018). "SoundHound, once just a music-recognition app, is now a billion dollar company". recode. Retrieved September 21, 2018.
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