Natural speech in gaming attracts new intelligent capital
UK based early stage venture fund IQ Capital, one of the co-investment Enterprise Capital Funds (ECF), along with several prominent business angels including games industry veteran David Braben and speech technology expert Professor Steve Young, have invested in Phonetic Arts, a company, that plans to bring natural speech to the gaming industry. IQ Capital lead the Series A funding round into Phonetic Arts Limited.
Phonetic Arts was founded in late 2006 in Cambridge by three speech industry veterans, Paul Taylor, Ian Hodson and Anthony Tomlinson and has strong links with Cambridge University. It focuses on the development of a technology which will enable computer games to generate dynamic natural speech. At the moment all speech used in computer games is pre-recorded, and therefore intrinsically limited.
Phonetic Arts however, has developed new technology which allows the game to generate speech which is natural and responds to the action happening in the game. The development of a natural speech synthesis engine will enable games to become far more realistic and enjoyable for users.
The technology, which is currently in alpha release, addresses a gap in the market and has already attracted significant pre-launch licensing sales. The company plans to fully launch the technology later this year, and target major games developers with a middleware package operating on all major platforms including Playstation 3, XBOX 360, Wii and PC.
This first round of financing will be used by the company to finish product development and achieve a significant market share in the sector.
Commenting on the investment, Max Bautin of IQ Capital – who will also be joining the company’s board – said, “With realism being the key competitive driver in gaming over the last two decades, character voice responses is a crucial area where little progress has been achieved. Having brought together a team of world experts in the field who have created a product with groundbreaking performance, Phonetic Arts is in an excellent position to change that, both within gaming and other fields where such systems are key. We are very excited about this investment and look forward to working with the management team.”
Paul Taylor, CEO of Phonetic Arts added, “We are very pleased to be working with IQ Capital, David Braben and Steve Young. They are providing us with the right mix of funding and support to ensure the acceleration of the growth of our business. We will use the investment to continue product development and rapidly increase sales.”
The IQ capital fund and its two sister seed funds, GEIF Ventures and COIN have the capacity to invest from £0.1 million to £3 million in each deal, with a focus on UK-based technology businesses. The fund has made seven new investments in the first 18 months of its operations.
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© Chilli Publishing Ltd 2008 |
10 OCT 2008 |
