TheMarker reports that voice recognition startup PerSay has raised one million NIS from the Israeli government fund Teuza. The investment was made as part of a larger round of 2.4 million NIS (about $600,000) that includes current shareholders in Persay – Yehoshua (Shuki) Gleitman and the Shrem-Pudim fund.
Persay has three products in the voice recognition space. As featured on the website:
VocalPassword – a text-dependent biometric speaker verification system that enables verification of a speaker in real time, using a simple spoken pass phrase. VocalPassword is used against identity theft and fraud by various financial institutions.FreeSpeech – a unique text-independent biometric speaker verification system that transparently verifies the identity of a speaker during the course of natural conversation. Totally content, language and accent independent, FreeSpeech transparently retrieves the biometric voice characteristics required for verification within seconds, eliminating the need for cumbersome authentication questions. Moreover, FreeSpeech enables contact centers to monitor incoming\outgoing calls and detect fraudulent activity by employing a watch list mechanism.
S.P.I.D.– a comprehensive audio processing system that efficiently searches for a target’s voice within a large volume of intercepted calls, regardless of the conversation content or method of communication. S.P.I.D. directs law enforcement agencies and intelligence organizations to relevant calls containing a target’s voice. The system uses a unique biometric analysis that matches relevant audio segments of a call to a pre-enrolled voiceprint.
Now that the Google Mobile app for the iPhone includes voice recognition, you can expect to see more dollars flowing to companies developing similar technologies. I am personally not a fan of voice recognition, but if it ends up catching up on booking services and banks phone transactions, Persay might be on to something.
I'm a former general partner at google ventures, head of Google for Entrepreneurs in Europe and founding head of Campus London, Google's first physical hub for startups.
I'm also the founder of Techbikers, a non-profit bringing together the startup ecosystem on cycling challenges in support of Room to Read. Since inception in 2012 we've built 11 schools and 50 libraries in the developing world.
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