Speechmatics caps major growth with US expansion

Speechmatics’ export growth signifies the scale of international demand for UK expertise in machine learning.

Speechmatics, a UK leader in any-context speech recognition technology, has opened its first US office in Denver, Colorado to capitalize on major US export growth.

It marks the Cambridge company’s third overseas office opening in three months, following its recent expansion into the Czech Republic and India, and caps a year which has seen the machine learning company double its revenue and workforce.

Sales to the US already account for 43% of the Cambridge company’s revenues, and it supplies blue-chip US companies from Adobe to Vonage. This latest growth enables the company to continue to expand into key US markets including broadcast media and contact centers, as well as government, defense and intelligence. Speechmatics already processes millions of hours per month for any live or recorded media. It pushes the boundaries of machine learning for the understanding of language and speech with mission-critical accurate, speech recognition that understands subtle differences in intention, dialect or nuance.

Pieter Knight, Strategic Sales and Business Development at Speechmatics, who is heading the US sales operation, said:

“When you see how Speechmatics is already enabling many US businesses to rapidly build innovative applications, how much growth we have experienced in just the last year and how our technology is evolving, we are already very disruptive in the market. A physical presence in America is the obvious next step for the growth of our US business.”

ohn Milliken, CEO of Speechmatics, said:

“Our growth in the past year is evidence of the burgeoning demand for technology that allows organizations to innovate with voice data. Market drivers include legislation requiring broadcasters to make video more accessible and to analyze and derive insight from voice data in contact centers. The speech recognition market is set to be worth $21.5 billion by 2024 and Speechmatics is ideally positioned to compete for a large slice of this exciting industry.”

Speechmatics’ recent US expansion was supported by the Department of International Trade (DIT) as part of a Government drive to boost British tech exports to markets such as the US. International Trade Secretary, Liz Truss, said:

“It’s great seeing innovative UK brands like Speechmatics taking advantage of the golden trading opportunities across the Atlantic, giving Americans access to the best British products. “Exporters, importers and consumers across the United States and the East of England have everything to gain from striking free trade agreements around the world with countries like the United States.”

Analysts have recognized Speechmatics as a pioneer in machine learning voice engineering. Its neural networks enable organizations to derive rich meaning from live or recorded speech data in any context. ​Its offices are based in Cambridge, UK, Denver, USA, Chennai, India and Brno, Czech Republic.