Audio & Speech

Today's Stories

1. 1

   Wispr raises $280M for AI speech-to-text at $2B valuation

   Wispr AI, which makes Flow—a dictation tool that converts spoken words into clean text—raised $280 million in Series B funding at a $2 billion valuation, led by Menlo Ventures. The company also previewed Canto, its first proprietary AI model trained to isolate human speech in noisy environments. Canto reduces transcription error rates in loud settings from 30% to nearly 5%–10%, making dictation practical beyond quiet rooms—in cars, offices, or near traffic. This matters for mobile workers, but also for deaf and hard-of-hearing users who rely on AI transcription in real-world, multi-speaker settings. Wispr says people have written over 60 billion words on Flow and the tool is used by almost all Fortune 500 companies and over 10,000 enterprises.

   Canto is in preview. The company's total raised now stands at $361 million after this round, which included new investors Acrew, Forerunner, Goodwater, Peak XV, Together Fund, and PLUS Capital alongside existing backers.

2. 2

   Regal Voice AI agents now available via Five9's contact center platform

   Enterprise voice AI company Regal Voice has integrated its autonomous AI voice agents into Five9's contact center platform through Five9's AI Agent Connect program. The integration allows Five9 customers to trigger follow-up calls or texts from Regal's AI agents automatically after a call event, with call records and contact history flowing between the two systems. Regal's software can also score contacts for intent and route high-intent leads directly into Five9 outbound campaigns without manual intervention. The partnership expands Regal's reach into Five9's customer base of more than 3,500 enterprises across more than 140 countries. For contact centers in regulated industries like healthcare, insurance, and education—where Regal already operates—the integration removes manual queueing steps and lets AI and human agents start with full call history. Regal claims a 99.5% resolution rate without human handoff, so the pairing may reduce operational friction for enterprises managing high call volumes.

   Regal has raised $83 million to date, most recently $40 million in October 2024. Five9 reported strong results on April 30, with subscription revenue growth accelerating for a second consecutive quarter and the company raising its full-year outlook; the stock rose about 18% on those results. Both companies are signaling momentum in agentic contact center software.

3. 3

   VocalCode brings push-to-talk dictation to code editors, $4.99 one-time buy

   VocalCode, a desktop dictation tool, lets developers speak code and prose directly into editors, terminals, and chat windows using on-device speech recognition. The tool costs $4.99 as a one-time purchase (no subscription), includes a 30-day free trial, and works on up to 3 devices. Speech recognition runs entirely on your CPU—audio never leaves your computer—making it useful for developers who want privacy-preserving hands-free input. The tool supports Mandarin Chinese and 25 European languages via auto-detecting models, plus English, so teams across regions can use it without uploading speech data to the cloud.

   VocalCode requires macOS 11 or later on Apple Silicon, or Windows; the 25 European language options are model-supported previews pending per-language testing. After the initial model download, recognition works fully offline; revalidation of the paid licence happens online at least every 30 days.

4. 4

   AI gives nonspeaking opera singer expressive voice

   Jakob Jordan, a young man with autism and apraxia who cannot reliably speak aloud, starred in an opera called Sensorium Ex using a custom AI speech synthesis device designed by New York University professor Luke DuBois. The device samples Jakob's own disordered speech, infers 401 parameters that represent the acoustic architecture of his voice, and synthesizes new text through those parameters—allowing him to hear his thoughts spoken in a voice that sounds like him, with full expressive control via lidar sensors that let him speed up, slow down, and change pitch in real time. Traditional text-to-speech devices for people with communication disabilities (AAC devices) treat the synthesized voice as generic—monotone and emotionless. Jakob's system shifts the frame: instead of just outputting text, it gives him what users identified as a civil rights need—the right to inject emotional affect, to sound sarcastic or joyful or upset. Composer Paola Prestini built the opera around this insight, working with poet Brenda Shaughnessy (who has lived experience as a mother to a nonverbal child) to honor the disabilities written into the characters and create a framework where disabled performers could thrive.

   The device runs entirely on a local computer using lidar sensors (the same $6 technology that deploys car airbags) rather than cloud services, preserving privacy by eliminating third-party data exposure. Jakob continues to use a traditional text-to-speech device for everyday life; the AI voice is his choice for artistic expression and performance. DuBois notes that entering what you want to say remains slow and cumbersome—the team's next challenge.

5. 5

   Dictata: Local Whisper voice dictation for Windows, no data leaves machine

   A developer released Dictata v0.1.0, a Windows application that transcribes speech locally using Whisper (an AI speech-to-text model) and whisper.cpp, then pastes the text into any active application—all without sending audio or text off the device. Businesses and individuals handling sensitive information can now dictate without exposing audio to cloud services; the tool also offers local LLM post-processing (cleanup, email formatting, lists) and supports GPU acceleration (Vulkan for AMD/Intel/NVIDIA), making it practical for real-world use on personal machines.

   The tool requires Windows 10/11, ffmpeg for file transcription, and optional Vulkan SDK for GPU support; it is open-source under MIT with Commons Clause (free for personal use, not for commercial resale), with a built-in model library and HuggingFace integration for easy model downloads.

6. 6

   Suno Studio 2.0 adds chat interface, unrestricted export for paid users

   Suno rolled out Studio 2.0 with a beta chat feature that lets Premier subscribers talk to the platform like a bandmate to create instruments, vocals, or custom plugins. The update also includes MIDI import, recording, editing, stem separation, automation curves, and unrestricted multitrack export at 32-bit/48 kHz. Plugin creation currently does not consume credits, though Suno says a credit system may come later. The chat-driven interface transforms Suno from a pure music generator into a full digital audio workstation (DAW) — a desktop tool traditionally used by professional producers — bringing AI composition into professional workflows. However, the unrestricted export directly contradicts Suno's recent download limits designed to curb spam distribution on streaming platforms, signaling a trade-off between enabling paying professionals and controlling misuse.

   The credit system for plugin creation remains undecided; Suno may introduce charges later. The company also faces ongoing copyright disputes, including a recent German court ruling that the service violates German copyright law and does not qualify under U.S. fair use doctrine.