Signapse Closes Seed Funding Round of £2 Million to Accelerate Accessibility for Deaf People
Signapse, a Generative AI Sign Language translation software company, today announced the closing of a new seed funding round of £2 million with £1.5 million from investors and £500k from Innovate UK. This round of funding was led by Soulmates Ventures and Deeptech Seed Fund, with participation from other investors, including the Royal Association for Deaf people, Empirical Ventures, CEAS Investments, and The FSE Group.
“I couldn’t be more excited and proud about this next stage in our growth. It is a landmark opportunity, a once in a lifetime moment, to build a transformative product. I would like to thank everyone that is, and has been, part of our amazing team.”, says Sally Chalk, CEO and Co-Founder at Signapse.
“This is an important chapter for Signapse, where we can expand our AI messaging from limited domains of discourse such as Transport to more open ended markets such as Website and Video Translation.”, says Ben Saunders, CTO and Co-Founder at Signapse.
This new round of funding will be used to improve Deaf accessibility through building unconstrained translation for Sign Language. Specifically, the areas that the company will focus on are:
Expanding into the Video Translation market to improve Deaf accessibility globally
Building unconstrained translation for BSL with the ability to translate from any English sentence into BSL using AI
Improve the quality of Signapse AI-generated Sign Language Videos
“I am particularly excited about the future market potential for this application. At the moment English to BSL translation is a highly manual endeavour which limits the broad accessibility to a variety of content for deaf people. In a future where Signapse envisage real-time unconstrained English to BSL transalation with photo-realistic avatar generation the number of companies that may now consider making it mandatory to use technology created by Siganpse could be enormous.” says Dr Johnathan Matlock, Co-Founder and Partner at Empirical Ventures.
“We at Soulmates Ventures are proud and excited to be a part of the Signapse endeavour in building unconstrained generative AI sign language translation. Their innovative solution is reflecting the daily challenges and needs of the Deaf people. We are looking forward to supporting the Signapse team through our acceleration programme to amplify their distinctive real-time solution and enhance accessibility for the Deaf community globally.”, says Michal Sikyta, Investment Director at Soulmates Ventures.
"We're very proud to have backed the Signapse team since the spinout stage and really pleased that their great progress has allowed us to co-lead this round.", says Pearse Coyle, Founder and Partner at Deeptech Seed Fund.
Over the past two years, Signapse has used Generative AI to create 5,000 BSL train announcements daily throughout the UK, as well as delivering over 4,000 manual BSL translations for clients in the website and video markets. More recently, Signapse has delivered Deaf accessibility to transport companies such as LNER Train Stations in the UK, and Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International (CVG) Airport in OH, USA.
About Empirical Ventures
Empirical Ventures leads pre-seed and seed rounds for deep science startups that are creating century-defining technologies. Co-founded by Dr. Ben Miles (physics) and Dr. Johnathan Matlock (chemistry), they have extensive experience as scientists, entrepreneurs, and investors, with 55 investments so far. They also sit on the board of 8 companies, who have collectively raised >£20m. The team are looking for exceptional science-led startups that are using the latest technological advances to solve some of the most pressing challenges facing society and our planet. Empirical fills a key need in the deeptech landscape in the UK by leading due diligence on deep science startups, helping to de-risk early stage investments for their investors and co-investors. The target is a £10M S/EIS fund and a side angel syndicate. Empirical Ventures operates as an appointed representative of SFC Capital Partners. For more information about Empirical Ventures and its mission, please visit empiricalventures.vc.
About Signapse:
Signapse is a Sign Language translation software company that uses Generative AI to achieve photo-realism and accuracy to provide greater accessibility for the Deaf community. All of the world’s digital information currently exists in a written and audible format. Signapse won’t stop until all this information is automatically available in Sign Language.
Visit www.signapse.ai to learn more about their AI powered Sign Language translation software.
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