Speech technology startup Murf AI founded by IIT Kharagpur batchmates has raised $10 million in funding round led by Matrix Partners India. Matrix Partners is an investment firm that invests across a variety of sectors including consumer technology, B2B enterprises, and fintech among others.
Murf’s existing investor Eleven Capital as well as prominent angel investors such as vice president, product at Disney Streaming, Ajay Arora; Ola cofounder, Ankit Bhati; Mad Street Den cofounder, Ashwini Asokan, were also among the investors who participated in the funding round.
Founded in the year 2020 by Sneha Roy, Ankur Edkir and Divyanshu Pandey, Murf AI is an artificial intelligence-enabled software tool, creates human-like voiceovers for various production as well as presentation works that substitute the complexity required for recording or hire voice-over artist.
“We’re big believers that AI will reinvent every market and Murf is reinventing a multi-billion dollar category with their AI-voiceover technology. Creating voice overs is hard, and Murf’s unique IP makes it easy for every individual to create emotional and theatrical voices—faster, better, and cheaper,” said Pranay Desai, principal, Matrix India.
"AI-driven, life-like voiceovers are the next frontier in the text-to-speech market. Murf, with their stellar founding team and unique IP, is perfectly poised to gain a leadership position in this space. Their execution prowess and tech-first focus is evident in the solid traction and growth that they've demonstrated so far,” said Mukul Arora, co-managing partner, Elevation Capital.
The startup will use the funds for the product’s future innovation, to accelerate the pace of research and development along with expanding its existence in some specific regions.
The startup raised $1.5 million in May last year as part of a seed funding round led by Elevation Capital and a few angel investors and since then the startup has synthesised over 1 million voiceover projects. Educators, authors, podcasters, animators, product developers and YouTubers among others are using the startup for their voiceovers.
“Synthetic media is poised to become omnipresent in the near future and voice is at the core of it. At Murf, we continue to make advances in our speech technology to bring the diverse abilities of talented voice actors at our customers’ fingertips through AI. This Series A investment would further bolster our commitment towards simplifying and scaling voiceovers,” said Edkie, who is also the chief executive at Murf AI.
“Synthetic media is poised to become omnipresent in the near future and voice is at the core of it. At Murf, we continue to make advances in our speech technology to bring the diverse abilities of talented voice actors at our customers’ fingertips through AI. This Series A investment would further bolster our commitment towards simplifying and scaling voiceovers,” said Edkie, who is also the chief executive at Murf AI.
Over 120 AI voices in more than 20 languages can be found in Murf's curated voice library where Nearly 80 per cent clients are from countries in the US, Canada, and the EU.