Audio AI startup Cochlear.ai has landed 300 million won (USD $269k) in investment from K Cube Ventures.
Cohlear.ai is developing an audio AI platform that the combines sounds we hear around us with a machine learning algorithm. The startup was founded in July this year by Dr. Yoonchang Han who studied Digital Audio and Music System Engineering at the University of London. Describing itself as a group of researchers who specialize in audio signal processing, the company’s team are all friends who studied and worked together at Seoul National University as part of the Music and Audio Research.
Cochlear.ai plans to apply its audio analysis to various IoT-based services and technology. One example of this is an AI home device that can inform you whether you have a cold or not by listening to the sound of your cough.
“The core of developing audio-based machine learning algorithms is having good quality data,” says CEO Han. “We will focus on continually expanding our technology research and audio data to go beyond existing audio recognition and create a platform that can recognize information from a variety of sounds like a person can.”
Recently the company took part in DCASE 2017 (Detection and Classification of Acoustic Scenes and Events Challenge) which was hosted by IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) and sponsored by Google. Cochlear.ai took out first prize in two categories, while making runner up in two others.
“There still aren’t many cases of technology developments in the area of non-verbal or specialized audio both here and overseas,” says K Cube Ventures partner Jun Kim. “We hope that Cochlear.ai’s fusion of audio with AI will be able to keep pace with the rapidly growing AI market, and serve as a model company in the industry.”
