Wispr Raises $280 Million to Advance Its Flow AI Voice Technology

Speech technology and artificial intelligence startup Wispr raised $280 million in funding to advance its Flow voice-based writing platform, improve speech recognition, and expand its human and AI interaction technology.;

The funding round was led by Menlo Ventures, Notable Capital, NEA, Neo Ventures, 8VC, MVP Ventures, Acrew, Activate, Forerunner, Goodwater, Peak XV, Together Fund, and PLUS Capital. This latest round brings Wispr's total funding so far to $361 million.

The newly-raised capital will be used in research and development, particularly in improving speech recognition accuracy and expanding the deployment of Wispr's technology

Alongside the funding announcement, Wispr this week previewed its Canto speech recognition model, which it says is capable of recognizing and converting speech to text, even in noisy real-world environments like cars, busy streets, or open offices. The company claims that, in particularly noisy environments, the model achieves word error rates between 5 percent and 10 percent. It also expects the number of voice-generated texts requiring manual editing to fall by up to 35 percent with Canto.

Canto can handle multilingual speech and incorporates personal dictionaries and frequently used names to improve accuracy.

Wispr CEO and co-founder Tanay Kothari said in a statement that accuracy would determine whether speech technology becomes a genuine replacement for typing and noted that voice systems fail when users must repeatedly stop to correct mistakes, because interruptions break concentration and reduce trust in the technology.

Kothari said further that the conversation around voice technology changed significantly in the past year. Instead of questioning whether voice tools work, users now focus on time savings and new capabilities.