SpinVox raises whopping $100M+ for voicemail to text conversion
SpinVox, a London company that converts your voicemail into text, has raised more than $100 million to expand quickly by signing deals with large telecom carriers around the world — an apparent land-grab.
The amount of cash is significant, and a sign that SpinVox wants to sign up carriers before competitors such as Nuance or other emerging players, such as Jott or Simulscribe get there first.
Its SpinVox’s third round of capital, and investors include GLG Partners, Goldman Sachs, BlueMountain Capital Management and hedge fund Toscafund. It doubles the company’s investment. It had previously raised $100 million, including from ABN Amro, Gartmore, Allen & Co. and individuals.
The six-year-old company has signed deals with 12 carriers, including with Alltel Corp., Cincinnati Bell, and Telus, and wants to double that number this year. The company is especially strong in Europe, though, allowing conversion of messages in English, French, German and Spanish.
It’s also hip, letting you do things like write text messages with your voice, blog via a telephone call, and use voice to update your profile at Facebook, Jaiku and Twitter.
SpinVox claims more than 6 million users.We’ve mentioned SpinVox before, in coverage of newer players like Jott, which is free and actually uses people to do the translations.
Update: Meanwhile, private equity fund Quadriga Capital Russia is reportedly negotiating a sale of its 35 percent stake in Speech Technology Center (STC), a St. Petersburg-based developer of speech recognition technologies, according to Kommersant (which we found via Yakov Sadchikov). Nokia and Nuance are mentioned as possible buyers.
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About the Author, Matt Marshall
Matt launched VentureBeat in September of 2006, with the realization that no one else was covering the entrepreneurial and tech innovation scene with the velocity or depth that he was. Prior to founding VentureBeat, he covered venture capital for the San Jose Mercury News from 2001 to 2006. In 2002, Matt was awarded "Journalist of the Year" by the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists. Prior to working at the Merc, he was a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Bonn, Germany from 1995 to 1998, and a writer for the Washington Post in 1994. Matt holds a PhD in Government and an MA in German and European Studies from Georgetown University. In addition to VentureBeat, Matt is also the Executive Producer of DEMO, the leading launchpad event for emerging technologies.
