Camb.ai, co-founded by former Apple engineer Akshat Prakash and his father Avneesh Prakash, raised $4 million in a seed round in February and is closing a larger pre-Series A round to expand its reach and headcount. The startup uses a "three-layer" approach for AI-based translation, including the foundation layer of its Boli and Mars models, the infrastructure layer hosting these AI models, and the DubStudio platform for the front end. IMAX plans to roll out AI translations in stages, starting with high-resource languages.
Key takeaways:
- IMAX is partnering with Dubai-based startup Camb.ai to leverage AI for localizing its original content, including documentaries, to cater to the growing demand for non-English content.
- Camb.ai's AI models, Boli and Mars, are used for speech-to-text translation and speech emulation respectively, and are available on the startup’s DubStudio platform, which supports 140 languages.
- The AI models are trained using academic-licensed data sets and fine-tuned with data from early partners who deploy the models for AI-based dubbing and translation.
- IMAX plans to roll out AI translations in stages, starting with high-resource languages, after internal testing of Camb.ai's technology on its original content. The move is expected to help save on translation costs.