California-registered Lovo, a blockchain startup working on synthetic AI-powered speech, announced a $2 million extension to its pre-Series A round, bringing the total funding on this round to $6.5 million. The funding will be used to develop and polish its core AI voice technology and integrate it into Web 3.0, a statement released Wednesday reads.
The latest extension funding round was led by Hashed, a leading global crypto VC firm, alongside a star-studded list of angel investors and other top VCs. Some of the angel investors who participated in this round include Yat Siu (Founder of Animoca Brands), Patrick Lee (Founder of Rotten Tomatoes), Holly Liu (Founder of Kabam), Kun Gao (Founder of Crunchyroll), Ray Chan (Founder of 9GAG), Matt Finick (Former CFO of ROBLOX & Marvel Studios), and Daniel Wu (Actor of Into the Badlands & Tomb Raider).
“The vision and technical expertise behind Voiceverse are truly astounding,” said Baek Kim, Partner at Hashed on the latest funding in Lovo. “We strongly believe that voice is one of the missing links in a truly digital and inclusive Metaverse, enabling new ways for people to interact with each other in virtual worlds.”
Creating the Next Generation Voice NFTS
Lovo Inc. aims to create a next-generation synthetic speech platform that offers users across the global industries easy audio content production. Founded by a team of artificial intelligence and machine learning experts at U.C Berkeley, Lovo company has grown into one of the most innovative platforms in the blockchain-based synthetic speech industry venturing into the education, marketing, and entertainment industry. Today, the company boasts of more than 40,000 users across 41 countries actively using the platform, creating 3 million pieces of voice content to date.
Notwithstanding, the Lovo ecosystem is a creator-focused platform that allows voice actors to finally take a much more significant cut of their work and the profits generated from it. This improves actors’ and creators’ opportunities to earn more royalties from their work rather than a flat fee for their work, which at times sells for millions of dollars.
“We’ve long had the freedom to change our appearances however we want online, but not with how we sound,” said Tom Lee, Co-Founder of LOVO. “With Voiceverse, people can now add another layer of personalization and pseudonymity, completing their persona for the metaverse. As a company that’s spent years researching and developing applications leveraging AI Voice & Synthetic Speech, this was a no-brainer — Voiceverse is simply a natural progression in line with LOVO’s vision and tech.”
The latest funding comes about following the recent success of Lovo’s Voiceverse NFT collection, available on Opeansea, a set of 8,888 NFTs, each representing a unique, AI-generated voice. All 8,888 unique voices were produced starting from a seed of 100 real recordings. The seed voices were licensed from LOVO’s partner voice actors, including Jonny Cruz and Charlet Chung, most notable for their role in the popular game Overwatch.
The Voiceverse NFTs grant access to a unique AI voice model, which can be used to produce any kind of speech content or even used in real-time on voice chat platforms like Discord. The Voiceverse NFTs saw huge demand at launch in January 2022, selling out in less than 10 minutes at the public sale.
Future Plans for Synthetic Speech NFTS
Following the latest funding, Lovo plans to also introduce the synthetic voice/speech NFTs within the metaverse. According to the team’s statement, the unique NFTs can be combined with existing NFTs such as the popular Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFT avatars to give them a voice, improving their rarity and possibly value. Adding a voice to the image makes the NFT a truly complete digital avatar, powered by advances in AI technology.
In the future, Lovo also plans to create more partnerships with blockchain-based gaming projects and metaverse worlds such as Decentraland, Axie Infinity, and The Sandbox (Hashed is an early investor in all three). This integration will allow NFT holders on these platforms to customize their virtual identity using Voice NFTs, and mint renowned celebrity voices as new Voice NFT collections.
Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice
