Gaming artificial voice specialist secures €2.3m to grow London office and expand global reach

A firm specialising in ‘the most expressive realistic’ artificial voices for the gaming industry has closed a multi-million euro funding round.

Sonantic has secured €2.3m in an investment round led by EQT Ventures, with participation from existing investors Entrepreneur First, AME Cloud Ventures and Bart Swanson of Horizons Ventures.

Founded in 2018 by speech technologists Zeena Qureshi and John Flynn, Sonantic specialises in the creation of realistic artificial voices for use in the gaming and entertainment industries.

This latest investment will be used to grow Sonantic’s London-based team, building the company’s professional tool and expand its offering to more games studios globally.

Zeena Qureshi, CEO and co-founder at Sonantic, commented: “We’re teaching computers to speak the same way I taught children, with high levels of expressivity. Many TTS providers sound robotic because they don’t focus on the details that make voice truly human – breath, pitch, intonation, pacing, intensity, emotion, and variety.”

“By reducing the cost and iteration time associated with voice acting, we’re enabling new creative possibilities for game developers and this is just the start.

“Sonantic is creating a new way for actors to work and entertainment studios to optimise performance. We’re excited to have EQT Ventures on board for the journey ahead.”

Ted Persson, partner and investment advisor at EQT Ventures, added: “Today’s artificial voices sound robotic and monotonous, and there’s huge room for improvement.

“Zeena and John’s unique backgrounds in voice acting and speech therapy gives them a huge advantage in creating voices that are good enough for commercial use.”

“The opportunities for Sonantic’s human-sounding voices in the entertainment industry and beyond are endless and the EQT Ventures team is blown away by what Sonantic has built. We’re looking forward to supporting the team as they scale.”