Murf AI, a fast-growing synthetic speech technology startup, has announced a $10M Series A funding round led by Matrix Partners India with participation from existing investor Elevation Capital.
Founded in October 2020 by IIT-Kharagpur class mates Sneha Roy, Ankur Edkie, and Divyanshu Pandey, Murf provides an AI-enabled SaaS tool that allows users to generate “human-like” voice overs for videos and presentations—without the need for complex recording equipment or hiring a voice artist.
Prominent angel investors such as Ajay Arora, SVP Product, Disney Streaming; Ankit Bhati, Founder, Ola; Ashwini Asokan, Founder, Mad Street Den; Pushkar Mukewar, Founder, Drip Capital and Yamini Bhat Founder, Vymo have also contributed to the funding round. Murf plans to use these funds to drive further product innovation, accelerate R&D, and scale its presence in focused geographies.
In May of 2021, the company raised a $1.5M Seed funding round led by Elevation Capital and a few angel investors which helped them recruit talent, invest in product innovation, and user acquisition. Since then, Murf has grown 22 in ARR and synthesised 1 million+ voice over projects.
According to market reports, the global text to speech market is expected to reach $7.06B by 2028, growing at a 14.7% CAGR. In addition, the voiceover and the dubbing market is predicted to generate a total of $8B annually by 2027. Tapping into this unparalleled opportunity, Murf aims to make high-quality voice overs accessible to all by placing a simple yet powerful online voice studio in the hands of every content creator. From conversational to aspirational, casual to authoritative, excited to sad, cheerful to angry, Murf’s AI voices can simulate a variety of speaking styles and tones. The firm has a high-quality AI voice for every use case, including eLearning, advertising, podcasting, L&D, and audiobooks.
While text to speech has been around for years, limitations in quality restricted the usage of the technology to primarily IVR and chat bots. Recent advances in AI and deep learning have however made it possible to build synthetic voices that mimic the natural prosody and pronunciation of human speech. Murf’s AI engine has been trained on hours of actual human speech to produce high-fidelity synthetic AI voices that mimic the nuances and subtleties, including the likeness, style, and uniqueness of the human voice. The 120+ human-parity AI voices offered by Murf Studio across 20+ languages are rich with emotion and intonation. The startup is also working towards bridging the diversity gap that exists in traditional text to speech platforms by ensuring the inclusion of voices across varied accents like African American, British, and Australian English.
Ankur Edkie, Co-Founder and CEO, Murf AI, said: “Synthetic media is poised to become omnipresent in the near future and voice is at the core of it. At Murf, we continue to make advances in our speech technology to bring the diverse abilities of talented voice actors at our customers’ fingertips through AI. This Series A investment would further bolster our commitment towards simplifying and scaling voiceovers.”
Akin to the human brain, Murf’s AI-powered TTS can track and learn from a vast amount of contextual information to return a relevant response. Serving as an all-in-one voice solution, its simple-to-use AI voice generator enables users to add images, videos, and background music and sync the voiceover with the visuals and music. The platform also offers key features for smart pronunciations using IPA, voice customizations that enable users to change pitch, pause, emphasis, and speed, and ability to clone a voice.
“AI-driven, life-like voiceovers are the next frontier in the text to speech market. Murf, with their stellar founding team and unique IP, is perfectly poised to gain a leadership position in this space. Their execution prowess and tech-first focus is evident in the solid traction and growth that they’ve demonstrated so far. We are really excited to double down on our partnership with Murf.”, commented Mukul Arora, Co Managing Partner, Elevation Capital.
“We’re big believers that AI will reinvent every market and Murf is reinventing a multi-billion dollar category with their AI-voiceover technology. Creating voiceovers is hard, and Murf’s unique IP makes it easy for every individual to create emotional and theatrical voices—faster, better, and cheaper. With phenomenal customer love and international traction, Murf is an early category leader and we’re excited to partner with Ankur, Sneha, and Divyanshu on their next phase of growth,” said Pranay Desai, Principal, Matrix India.
