After a decade's worth of research and development, SoundHound launched its voice assistant platform Houndify for iOS and Android in March last year. The company is constantly working to improve its artificial intelligence assistant so that it can better compete with the likes of Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant. It develops what it calls “Collective A.I.” which is basically a powerful platform that enables developers to bring voice-enabled artificial intelligence to any app or service without having to create their own underlying libraries or an entirely new speech engine.
It has now raised $75 million in a new funding round that's led by Samsung Catalyst Fund and NVIDIA. If recent moves are any indication, this investment is likely going to have implications in the connected car race. SoundHound will put this investment to good use by expanding its AI technology to more markets across the globe and improve it in more ways than one.
There's no hiding the fact that Samsung is very serious about AI-powered voice assistants. It recently acquired a company started by the founders of Siri for the purpose of launching a new AI assistant called Bixby with the Galaxy S8. Reports suggest that Bixby will be capable of doing much more than its rivals can. It also goes without saying that the assistant will gradually be expanded to other Samsung products as well. Its $8 billion acquisition of Harman International also shows just how serious Samsung is about competing in the connected car segment.
