Google takes over Cambridge, UK, company Phonetic Arts and as seems usual with a company connected to Cambridge University (a founder is a professor) there are not financial details. There is no indication if Cambridge Enterprise is involved so presumably there were no patents. Funding came from Max Bautin of IQ Capital. Great to have return to Cambridge, UK, investors.
Phonetic Arts allows sound to change in a similar way to graphics. This is an idea we had for Tonemaker nearly ten years ago but did not execute.The price will come out in Cambridge and look forward to hearing it on the grapevine at a Christmas party. Wonder if all 14 people will be moving to Silicon Valley or whether they will be the nucleus of Google Research in Cambridge, UK? See below, guess they will be moving to London.
From IQ Capital:Mike Cohen, the manager of speech technology at Google, said “…Phonetic Arts’ team of researchers and engineers work at the cutting edge of speech synthesis, delivering technology that generates natural computer speech from small samples of recorded voice. There’s a particular focus right now in the U.K. on technology and innovation, and we’re delighted to be deepening our investment in the country with this acquisition. We already have a strong engineering center in London and look forward to welcoming Phonetic Arts to the team. We are excited about their technology, and while we don’t have plans to share yet, we’re confident that together we’ll move a little faster towards that Star Trek future”.
Max Bautin, Managing Partner of IQ Capital and a Phonetic Arts board member, worked with Phonetic Arts on the exit. He added “We’re delighted with this exit, which follows the sale of ImSense earlier this year. While IQ Capital Fund is continuing to actively invest and plans to make two to four further investments in the next 12 months, we are very pleased with these early successes, proving our investment model. I’d like to thank all the team of Phonetic, and especially founder CEO Paul Taylor, for their very hard work over the last two and a half years, as well as Stephen Young and David Braben, the two ‘IQ Angels’ who were of tremendous help to both us and the company since initial investment.”
Hope that the two angels did very well!!
Hat tip: Paul Hughes on Twitter
hughesintl Paul Hughes
Google buys Phonetic Arts – http://j.mp/h5DnxI
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