Lucida AI, a speech-to-speech AI platform for global communication, has raised a £5.3 million seed round led by UK-based Velocity Capital.
The round also included participation from European investors, including Next Tier Ventures and Look AI Ventures, alongside Turkey’s Bogazici Ventures, Yapı Kredi Frwrd Ventures and Ünlü & Co.
The round follows a $1.25m pre-seed investment led by Neo Asset Management, bringing the company’s total funding to $8.25m.
Lucida AI will use the new capital to expand into new languages and geographies, further develop its proprietary speech-to-speech AI infrastructure, scale its enterprise offering globally, and accelerate product development.
As people and organisations communicate across more languages and cultures, spoken fluency and confidence increasingly shape how clearly someone is understood. Lucida AI addresses this challenge by giving individuals and business teams continuous, on-demand speaking practice that fits into the flow of their day.
Through the platform, users can speak directly with AI in real time, without typing, complex interfaces, or scripted exercises. It acts as an AI-powered communication coach, helping users practice through natural dialogue.
Powered by its proprietary Speech Language Model (SLM), Lucida AI enables free-flowing conversations with AI that adapts to each speaker’s level in real time. The platform provides instant feedback on fluency, pronunciation, and clarity, and simulates real-world scenarios from everyday chats, such as ordering coffee, to high-stakes business meetings, presentations, and client calls.
Lucida AI is available as a mobile app for individual users, alongside secure deployment options for enterprise clients, including on-premises hosting and end-to-end encryption.
In just 15 months since launch, Lucida AI has scaled to over 3m users globally and generated more than 2.2 billion minutes of spoken interaction across Europe, the United States, and emerging markets.
“AI is becoming a global race, and meaningful innovation is no longer tied to a single geography. With this round, we’ve partnered with investors who share our long-term vision. Our focus is clear: building a scalable, speech-native AI platform that powers global communication,” said Mustafa Girgin and M. Sait Demirci, co-founders of Lucida AI.
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Thomas Lindup, COO at Velocity Capital, said: “Lucida AI possesses the characteristics of the types of businesses that the Velocity EIS Technology Fund looks to invest in: a strong management team; capital efficiency; data-driven; international application; significant growth in a growing market, with a broad and mixed customer base.
“We are delighted to join the team on their journey.”
Angelo Burgarello, partner at Look AI Ventures, added: “We invested in Lucida because of the team’s speed and a vision we found genuinely ambitious: making high-quality spoken-language practice accessible.
“The company aims to disrupt the LLM wrappers currently available, as none can provide the same level of reliability. Lucida is building a speech-native learning platform with real-time conversation and a phonetic engine that provides more accurate pronunciation feedback than generic AI tutors.
“With a seven-digit ARR, it’s on a clear path to becoming a category-defining company in AI-powered communication.”
Patricia Pastor, GP at Next Tier Ventures, added: “We believe AI’s next frontier is seamless human communication. Lucida AI is uniquely positioned to make that vision a reality on a global scale.”
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