AI-Powered Language Tutoring Platform Speak Raises $16 Million in Series B-2 Funding
Speak, an AI-powered language tutoring platform, recently announced that it has raised a $16 million Series B-2 funding round led by Lachy Groom, with participation from all existing major investors, including the OpenAI Startup Fund and new strategic investors such as the founders of Dropbox, Drew Houston, and Arash Ferdowsi.
Speak was co-founded in 2016 by Connor Zwick and Andrew Hsu with the aim of filling a significant educational gap by creating a virtual, AI-driven tutor capable of mimicking the benefits of one-on-one human tutoring. The platform uses advances in natural language processing and speech technologies to enable a two-way discussion with students. It has since expanded to over 20 countries, including Japan, Taiwan, Germany, and Brazil.
The new funding will be used to accelerate the development of the AI Tutor, as well as to expand into international markets and hire new personnel to support its availability in emerging markets. As the company gears up to enter the US market with multilingual options by the end of the year, Speak aims to grow its presence in major markets worldwide.
The collaboration with OpenAI has been a key factor in Speak’s success. OpenAI’s investment provided early access to its systems and Azure resources from Microsoft. This allowed Speak to tap into OpenAI’s AI technology for new capabilities and features. In March, the firm upgraded its AI Tutor with OpenAI’s GPT-4 text-generating model, which enabled highly personalized and contextual feedback for learners. GPT-4 resulted in increased user engagement and better learning outcomes. In addition, the firm adopted OpenAI’s Whisper API for multilingual speech recognition and collaborated on new plugins for ChatGPT, OpenAI’s AI chatbot.
Investor Lachy Groom said: “Education will continue to be a sector profoundly transformed by AI, as personalized one-on-one human tutoring is scarce and expensive. Speak’s mission to create a human-level AI tutor makes conversational practice accessible for all learners worldwide.”
Speak has become one of the most popular education apps in South Korea, where it first debuted, with over 100,000 subscribers. It claims to have helped nearly 6% of Korea’s population, or about 3 million people, learn English.
Speak’s latest funding brings its total raised to $63 million. With the additional funding and support from OpenAI, Speak is well-positioned for further growth and expansion. The platform’s innovative use of AI technology and commitment to affordable language education make it a standout in the edtech space, and a great option for teachers looking for an effective way to engage their students in language learning.
