Sanas taps AI to change call center workers' accents in real time | TechCrunch
Feb 19, 2025 - techcrunch.com
The demand for voice and speech recognition technologies is rapidly growing, with the market projected to reach over $28.1 billion by 2027. Sanas, a company founded in 2020, has carved out a niche by developing AI software that adjusts a speaker’s accent in real-time, aiming to reduce accent bias and enhance human communication. Co-founded by Maxim Serebryakov, Shawn Zhang, and Andrés Soderi, the company was inspired by a friend's experience with accent discrimination in a call center. Sanas claims its technology preserves the speaker's emotion and identity while minimizing noise and has trained its AI models with over 50 million speech utterances. Recently, Sanas acquired competitor InTone and has grown its customer base to around 50 clients across various industries, with annual recurring revenue reaching $21 million.
Despite some controversy over the potential homogenization of accents, Sanas continues to attract investment, recently closing a $65 million funding round that values the company at over $500 million. The funding, led by Quadrille Capital and Teleperformance, will support the development of new "speech-to-speech" algorithms and expansion into new regions and industries. Sanas plans to grow its team, currently around 150 people, and open a new office in the Philippines. The company is focused on scaling responsibly and innovating continuously to overcome potential challenges in the market.
Key takeaways:
The voice and speech recognition market is projected to be worth over $28.1 billion by 2027, with companies like Sanas carving out niches in this growing sector.
Sanas, founded in 2020, develops AI software that adjusts a speaker's accent in real-time, aiming to reduce accent bias and enhance human communication.
Sanas recently closed a $65 million funding round, valuing the company at over $500 million, and plans to expand its team and technology offerings.
Despite some controversy over its potential to homogenize accents, Sanas emphasizes its mission to break barriers and reduce discrimination in communication.
