BoldVoice, an AI-based voice coaching platform designed to help non-native English speakers improve pronunciation and clarity, has raised a $21 million Series A round led by Matrix, with participation from Flybridge, Xfund, Corazon Capital, Alumni Ventures, Umami Capital, and Y Combinator.
The company said it has surpassed five million downloads, serves professionals in more than 150 countries, and recently crossed $10 million in annual recurring revenue while operating with just seven employees. BoldVoice plans to use the new capital to expand globally and build additional AI-driven coaching capabilities, including proprietary speech models.
BoldVoice is targeting a large and persistent workplace challenge: the growing reliance on English for meetings, presentations, and client interactions, alongside evidence that foreign accents can negatively affect career outcomes. The platform aims to make high-quality speaking improvement more accessible by pairing expert-led instruction with real-time, AI-based feedback.
Users record their voice and receive instant, phoneme-level feedback, powered by speech models trained specifically for accent and pronunciation analysis. That AI layer is combined with video lessons from voice and accent coaches, enabling daily practice with measurable progress.
BoldVoice positions itself as a lower-cost alternative to traditional coaching, which it notes can cost $200 to $300 per hour. The company says its product provides unlimited, on-demand practice for less than the cost of a single coaching session over an entire year.
Founded by Anada Lakra and Ilya Usorov, BoldVoice said it is hiring across growth, product, and engineering as it expands the platform and deepens its speech-model stack.
KEY QUOTES
“AI has transformed how we write, but spoken communication — where teams actually build trust and close deals — has been left behind. We’re fixing that. We’re giving a billion non-native English speakers a personal voice coach.”
Anada Lakra, Co-Founder and CEO, BoldVoice
“Speech feedback only works if it is extremely precise. General speech recognition systems aren’t designed to hear the nuances of accented speech. At BoldVoice, we’re building the ears on the machine with AI models trained specifically for accent and pronunciation analysis, so we can deliver precise and actionable feedback in real time.”
Ilya Usorov, Co-Founder and CTO, BoldVoice
“There are millions of non-native English speakers whose careers are held back by something coachable—and BoldVoice has built the AI to coach it at scale. They’re defining a new category in professional communication and we’re excited to support their growth.”
Kojo Osei, Partner, Matrix
