Text-based Voiceover Startup Murf.ai Secures $1.5 Mn Seed Round Led By Elevation Capital
The capital raised will be utilized for hiring, product innovation, and strategic expansion to key geographies
AI-enabled voiceover startup Murf.ai on Thursday announced that it has raised $1.5 million in Seed funding led by Elevation Capital. Angel investors who participated in this funding round include Vidit Aatrey (Meesho), Sanjeev Barnwal (Meesho), Kashyap Deorahe (Hypertrack), and Ashish Goel (Urban Ladder).
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The funding will be used for hiring AI research talent for R&D and product innovation, building a superior voice synthesis technology, and driving expansion across EMEA and the Americas.
Founded in October 2020 by IIT-Kharagpur batchmates Sneha Roy, Ankur Edkie, and Divyanshu Pandey, Murf.ai is an AI-enabled SaaS tool that allows users to generate "human-like voiceovers for videos and slideshows—without hiring a voice artist or using any complex recording equipment. Their aim is to make high-quality voiceovers accessible by placing a simple yet powerful online voice studio in the hands of every content creator.
"In the last few years, the advances in speech synthesis technology have brought the quality at par with natural human speech. At Murf.ai, we are on a mission to integrate the latest AI and voice technologies to provide realistic, human-sounding voiceovers for a diverse set of use cases. Our AI-based voice cloning technology will also allow users to create custom clones of their voices using just a few minutes of recorded audio. It's an exciting time to be working in this space, and this round of funding will enable us to build a passionate team of engineers and researchers to enhance our technology stack," said Ankur Edkie, chief executive officer and chief technology officer, Murf.ai.
In the last year, the founders had faced significant challenges in creating voiceovers for product demos and updating existing files with feature launches. They realized there was a gap in the market and set out to build the Murf.ai platform.
"We believe that the (Murf.ai) team has identified a latent but deep unmet need for making voiceovers easy. Given their strong tech and business capabilities, we are confident that Sneha, Ankur, and Divyanshu would be able to democratize voiceovers and scale Murf.ai to great success. We are very excited to partner with them from Day One and look forward to the exciting journey ahead," added Mukul Arora, partner, Elevation Capital.
Voice is a large market with the audiobook and podcast segments valued at $1.2 billion and $9 billion respectively, both growing over 20 per cent CAGR. The founders are looking to tap into this opportunity by simplifying voice technology and making high-quality, natural-sounding voiceovers accessible to enterprises, SMBs, and content creators globally.
Since its inception, the Murf Studio has helped users create over 40,000 voiceovers in 15 languages across the world. In the last six months, the company has witnessed a massive twelvefold growth in revenue, with 80 per cent of the business coming in from the US and UK.
