Neuphonic Raises GBP 3M Pre-Seed for Multilingual Voice AI

Voice AI start-up Neuphonic has announced that it has raised GBP 3m (USD 3.9m) in pre-seed funding, in a bid to revolutionize text-to-speech technology.

The funding round was led by Moonfire, a UK-based “technology company that does venture capital” focused on pre-seed and seed companies looking to become category leaders. Tiny VC, Salica Oryx Fund, and Cur8 Capital also participated.

Founded in 2024, Neuphonic’s technology enables real-time, life-like speech in multiple languages with an ultra-low latency of twenty-five milliseconds. Neuphonic’s goal is to create natural, responsive conversations using AI, for industries where uninterrupted communication is key.

The company was founded by former Papercup co-founder Jiameng Gao and former hedge fund analyst Sohaib Ahmad, who said to Tech Funding News, “High latency in Voice AI prevents natural interaction and slows growth in key fields like gaming, conversational AI, digital avatars, and real-time translation. We want to reach a point where AI feels like a natural extension of ourselves – intuitive and effortless.”

Neuphonic has reportedly filed a patent for an algorithm that generates speech word for word as text arrives, having an impact on real-time translation and content localization. Co-founder and CTO Jiameng Gao explained: “By generating speech word-by-word as text arrives, we unlock a wide range of use cases for text-to-speech that wasn’t possible before.” 

Akshat Goenka, Partner at Moonfire, noted: “Voice AI has been a sleeping giant, held back by technical limitations that Neuphonic is now solving. Their technology has the potential to unlock significant value across multiple industries.”

Neuphonic plans to invest its pre-seed funding in expanding its language capabilities, enhancing the performance of its text-to-speech models, and developing solutions for on-device deployment. Since launching a closed beta of its technology in October, the tool has been used by over 1,000 unique users.