Speechmatics

Cambridge speech-recognition company that turns spoken words into text in many languages and accents, founded in 2006 by a pioneer of neural networks for speech.

About Speechmatics

Speechmatics builds speech recognition technology: software that listens to people talking and turns it into accurate text. Its tools are used for transcribing meetings, captioning video, helping doctors and lawyers with their notes, supporting call centres and powering voice-based AI assistants. The company has made a point of working well across many languages and accents, not just one standard way of speaking.

The company was founded in 2006 in Cambridge as Cantab Research by Dr Tony Robinson, who pioneered applying neural networks to speech recognition at the University of Cambridge in the 1980s, long before they became fashionable. It later took the name Speechmatics and has offices in Cambridge and London, with other offices listed in Chennai in India and Brno in the Czech Republic.

The company's aim is summed up in the phrase "Understand Every Voice". It says it wants its technology to be inclusive and accurate for all speakers, and has published work on reducing bias so that people of different backgrounds are understood equally well. It lists four values: care deeply, put people first, be ambitious, and move fast, with the freedom to fail fast.

Its main products are speech-to-text in real time or from recordings, an on-device version that runs without the internet, and a Voice Agent API for building spoken AI assistants. Milestones reported by Wikipedia include Global English in 2018, a single English model covering many accents, the Ursa speech-to-text engine in 2023 and the Flow API for voice interactions in 2024. Adobe has used its technology to bring on-device speech recognition to Premiere.

Working at Speechmatics means machine learning, speech science, software and customer-facing roles in a company that grew out of Cambridge research. The pages we read do not describe graduate or internship schemes, so students should check its careers page.

What they do

• {'desc': 'Accurate transcription of speech in many languages and accents.', 'title': 'Speech to text'}
• {'desc': 'Live captions and transcripts as people speak.', 'title': 'Real-time transcription'}
• {'desc': 'Speech recognition that runs on a device without the cloud.', 'title': 'On-device speech recognition'}
• {'desc': 'Tools for building AI voice assistants.', 'title': 'Voice Agent API'}

Key facts

• Founded: Cambridge, UK, 2006 (originally Cantab Research)
• Founder: Dr Tony Robinson
• Headquarters: Cambridge Science Park, Cambridge, UK
• Other offices listed: London, Chennai and Brno
• Mission: Understand Every Voice

Website: www.speechmatics.com