Music streaming giant Spotify has swooped to acquire AI voice platform Sonantic.
The London company’s tech creates nuanced and realistic voices from text.
It was used to give Val Kilmer his old voice back in recent blockbuster sequel Top Gun: Maverick. The actor (pictured), who plays ‘Iceman’ in the franchise, underwent a tracheotomy in 2014 due to throat cancer.
The terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Spotify said it has identified several potential opportunities for text-to-speech capabilities across its platform that over the long term, high-quality voice will be important to growing its market share.
“For example, this voice technology could allow us to give context to users about upcoming recommendations when they aren’t looking at their screens,” it said in a statement.
“Using voice in these moments can reduce barriers to creating new audio experiences – and open up the doors to even more new opportunities.
“Listeners come to Spotify for all of the best audio content in the world – and we believe that Sonantic’s technology will allow us to create high-quality experiences for our users by building on our existing technical capabilities.”
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Sonantic has previously raised less than $3 million in funding from investors including EQT Ventures, Entrepreneur First, AME Cloud Ventures, Bart Swanson of Horizons Ventures, Twitch’s Kevin Lin, Jeremy Jap and Charles Jolley.
“We’re really excited about the potential to bring Sonantic’s AI voice technology onto the Spotify platform and create new experiences for our users,” said Ziad Sultan, Spotify’s VP of personalization.
“This integration will enable us to engage users in a new and even more personalised way.”
Sonantic co-founders Zeena Qureshi and John Flynn said: “We’re looking forward to joining Spotify and continuing to build exciting voice experiences.
“We believe in the power voice has and its ability to foster a deeper connection with listeners around the world, and we know we can be better than ever on the world’s largest audio platform.”