Murf AI raises $10M in Series A led by Matrix Partners India

The capital will be used to expand the capabilities of Murf's core synthetic speech technology, scale its voice catalogue, and broaden the company's reach globally, among other product developments.

Utah, USA. September 21, 2022; Murf AI, a fast-growing synthetic speech technology startup that is transforming the way voiceovers are created, is today announcing a $10M Series A funding round led by Matrix Partners India with participation from existing investor Elevation Capital, as well as 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. Murf plans to use these funds to drive further product innovation, accelerate R&D, and scale its presence in focused geographies.

Founded in October 2020 by IIT-Kharagpur graudates Sneha Roy, Ankur Edkie, and Divyanshu Pandey, Murf provides an AI-enabled SaaS tool that allows users to generate "human-like' voiceovers for videos and presentations'”without the need for complex recording equipment or hiring a voice artist.

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 22x 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 dubbing market is predicted to generate a total of $8B annually by 2027. Tapping into this unparalleled opportunity, Murf aims to make high-quality voiceovers 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 chatbots. 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 the traditional text to speech platforms by ensuring the inclusion of voices across varied accents like African American, British, and Australian English.

"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,' said Ankur Edkie, Co-Founder and CEO, Murf AI.

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,' commented Pranay Desai, Principal, Matrix India.

About Murf AI:
Murf helps businesses simplify the process of creating natural-sounding voiceovers using AI. The firm's AI-powered Saas tool enables users to create lifelike voices for their content in a matter of minutes. From L&D, educators, authors, and podcasters to animators, product developers, YouTubers, freelancers, and corporate coaches, the platform has a voice for every creator across all industries. Murf's curated voice library of 120+ realistic sounding AI voices in 20+ languages, is ideal for those on a tight budget who want to create voiceovers at scale. Murf's geographic footprint spans worldwide, with 80 percent of its customers coming in from the US, Canada, and EU regions.

For more information please visit https://murf.ai/ or follow via Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube

About Elevation Capital:
Elevation Capital is a leading venture capital firm which provides seed and early stage capital for emerging companies in India. Elevation Capital has been investing in India since 2002 deploying almost $2 billion of capital in over 150 companies. The firm announced its eighth pool of capital of $670 million in April 2022. The firm is led by Co-Managing Partners Ravi Adusumalli and Mukul Arora, along with three Managing Directors Mridul Arora, Deepak Gaur and Mayank Khanduja. The firm has invested in over 150 companies across Consumer Internet, SaaS, Fintech, Consumer Brands, Edtech, Healthtech and Web3/Crypto, and has offices in Bengaluru, Gurgaon and Salt Lake City.

About Matrix Partners India:
Founded in 2006, the firm invests in Indian companies targeting the consumer and enterprise market at seed, early, and early growth stages. Matrix India has invested in several market-leading companies such as Ola (mobility), Dailyhunt (mobile local language platform), Razorpay (payments), OfBusiness (B2B Commerce, fintech), Five Star Business Finance (SME lending), Ola Electric (electric vehicles), DealShare (social commerce platform), Stanza Living (tech-enabled student housing platform), OneCard (mobile-first credit card), Country Delight (D2C dairy & fresh foods brand), GoKwik (e-commerce enablement platform), Captain Fresh (seafood marketplace), Bijnis (B2B platform for factories), MoEngage (intelligent marketing cloud platform), Superops (MSP software), Zupee (skill-based gaming app), Rocketlane (customer onboarding software), 100ms (live video infrastructure startup) and Itilite (corporate travel SaaS platform) among others. Matrix India has advisory offices in Bangalore, Delhi, and Mumbai. Further information is available at www.matrixpartners.in. To know more about our investment philosophy & ideologies, check out the #MatrixMoments podcast.