- Otter.ai — an AI-powered transcription app company — announced it has raised $10 million from NTT DOCOMO
Otter.ai — an AI-powered transcription app company — announced it has raised $10 million from Japan’s leading mobile operator NTT DOCOMO, according to TechCrunch. And the two companies are teaming up to support Otter’s expansion into the Japanese market where DOCOMO will be integrating Otter with its own AI-based translation service subsidiary called Mirai Translation. Otter has similar partnerships with companies like Zoom and Dropbox.
The investment was made through DOCOMO’s wholly-owned subsidiary called NTT DOCOMO Ventures. Including this funding round, Otter has raised $23 million in funding from NTT DOCOMO Ventures, GGV Capital, Draper Dragon Fund, Duke University Innovation Fund, Slow Ventures, and several other firms.
Launched in 2018, Otter essentially offers a way for users to search voice conversations easily. And Otter.ai CEO and founder Sam Liang and his team built technology designed for capturing conversations such as meetings and interviews and transcribes it. Plus the product creates automated transcriptions in real-time as the speakers are talking. From there, the transcript can be searched.
Liang is known for previously working as a Tech Lead at Google. And he also launched a location startup called Alohar Mobile, which was acquired by Alibaba in 2016.
“The Japanese market values high-quality detailed meeting notes, and Otter’s highly accurate A.I.-powered note-taker overcomes language barriers and improves the operating efficiency of Japanese companies with global operations,” added Tomoyoshi Oono, senior vice president and general manager of the Innovation Management Department in the R&D Innovation Division at DOCOMO. “There is a large business market opportunity for Otter.ai and DOCOMO’s translation service.”
With this round of funding, Otter plans to hire more talent and enhance its artificial intelligence technologies in speech recognition, speaker identifications, and automatic summarization.
