Respeecher
Kyiv, Ukraine · StartupOverview: Respeecher is a cutting-edge AI voice synthesis startup that enables one person's voice to be transformed into the voice of another specific person, with uncanny realism. In other words, it's known for its voice cloning technology. Respeecher's system takes in an actor or user's speech and outputs audio that sounds like a target voice - be it a famous actor, a historical figure, or anyone for whom it has trained a model. This technology has huge applications in entertainment: filmmakers can revive voices of actors from years past, game developers can have characters speak in iconic voices, and creators can produce content where, say, a celebrity appears to narrate (with permission). What makes Respeecher stand out is the high fidelity of the cloned voices - they are nearly indistinguishable from the real person, capturing emotion and intonation accurately. Respeecher provides its tech via a software interface; typically, a voice model is trained on recordings of the target voice, and then a voice actor provides performance which is converted. Importantly, Respeecher emphasizes ethical use: it requires consent from the voice owners and has gained a reputation for an "ethics-first" approach in the emerging synthetic media field. Founding Story (2018): Respeecher was founded in February 2018 in Kyiv, Ukraine by Alex Serdiuk, Dmytro Bielievtsov, and Grant Reaber. Serdiuk and Bielievtsov are Ukrainian, and Reaber is an American speech technologist - the trio met through mutual research interests in speech processing. They realized that recent advances in deep learning could make high-quality voice conversion possible, and they set out to create a system far beyond the rudimentary voice changers of the past. In 2018-2019, they went through the Comcast NBCUniversal LIFT Labs Accelerator (powered by Techstars) in the US, which gave them industry connections. Early on, Respeecher got a lucky break: it was approached to work on a high-profile but secret project - which turned out to be Lucasfilm's The Mandalorian (Season 2 finale in 2020). The task was to recreate the voice of a young Luke Skywalker as he would have sounded in the 1980s, using Mark Hamill's old recordings. Respeecher delivered successfully, astonishing Hollywood sound engineers. This successful debut put Respeecher on the map in the film industry. In subsequent months, they also worked on a Super Bowl commercial voicing Vince Lombardi (AI-cloned from archival audio). The Ukrainian team, working under NDA, built these groundbreaking demos which then led to word-of-mouth referrals in Hollywood. Product and Use Cases: Respeecher's core product is delivered as a service to content creators. A client provides audio of the target voice (e.g., recordings of a person) and Respeecher trains a custom voice model. Then the client (often a voice actor or the person themselves) provides the new dialogue, which Respeecher's system converts into the target's voice. One notable use case was the documentary short film "In Event of Moon Disaster" - Respeecher recreated President Nixon's voice to simulate him reading a speech that was written in case Apollo 11 failed, and this project won an Emmy Award in 2021 for Outstanding Interactive Media (Respeecher's team was credited for the voice work). Another big use case: Darth Vader's voice in 2022's Obi-Wan Kenobi series - James Earl Jones, aged 91, could no longer perform with the same power, so Lucasfilm used Respeecher to generate Vader's lines using Jones' archival voice data. This was done with Jones's consent (he effectively authorized the AI recreation of his iconic voice). The result was so good that audiences thought Jones had recorded the lines himself. Outside of film/TV, Respeecher has been used in video games (e.g., to recreate voices of deceased voice actors so characters can return), and in music - in 2022, it enabled artist Aloe Blacc to perform a song where his voice was converted to sound like the late Avicii's voice, as a tribute. Researchers and archivists have also shown interest in using it to restore voices for people who lost theirs (like throat cancer patients), although that's still experimental. Traction and Achievements: Though a B2B company, Respeecher gained public fame because of the high-profile nature of its projects. By 2022, virtually every Star Wars fan and many industry professionals had heard of Respeecher due to media coverage of its involvement in resurrecting Luke Skywalker's youthful voice and Darth Vader's classic tones. The company has a relatively small number of clients (dozens of studios, game companies, etc.), but each project is high value. Its technology earned it an Engineering Emmy Award in 2021, and it won TechCrunch's Startup Battlefield (audience choice) at CES in 2020. In terms of funding, Respeecher raised about $1.5M in early 2020 (around the Techstars time), and as of 2021 it had raised over $3M in total from investors including Techstars, ff Venture Capital, and Acrobator Ventures. The team remained fairly lean (under 50 people) but comprised specialized AI researchers and sound engineers. Financially, Respeecher's revenue grew with each Hollywood contract; while not public, one can infer that by 2022 it was profitable or close, given the repeat work from Disney/Lucasfilm and others. One of Respeecher's achievements is also on the ethical front: in 2023 it was one of ten companies (alongside OpenAI and TikTok) to sign the Partnership on AI's framework for responsible media, committing to practices like obtaining consent, watermarking AI content, etc. This proactive stance has made them a trusted partner in an area often seen with suspicion (deepfakes). The war in Ukraine did pose a challenge - much of Respeecher's team was Kyiv-based, and during the Russian invasion in Feb 2022, the team amazingly continued working (the Obi-Wan Kenobi Vader voice project was completed in the spring of 2022 while Kyiv was under threat). This dedication further earned them respect in the industry. Key Partnerships: Respeecher's notable partnerships are with major studios like Disney/Lucasfilm, and with game studios such as CD Projekt Red (who used Respeecher in 2023 to voice a character in Cyberpunk 2077 in Polish, whose original actor had passed away). It also collaborated with the creative team of the documentary "Val" to recreate actor Val Kilmer's voice, which he lost due to cancer (Kilmer and his son provided the training data). Each successful partnership validates the tech and leads to more clients. On the academic side, Respeecher worked with medical research to explore giving people who lost their voice (e.g., ALS patients) a chance to speak in their own reconstructed voice - a heartwarming application of the tech. Future Outlook: Respeecher sits at the forefront of AI in media. The demand for voice cloning is likely to increase - whether to dubbing movies in a star's own voice across languages, bringing historical figures' voices to life for museums, or personal uses (with permission, someone might license their voice). The company's focus will be to maintain quality leadership as big players (like Microsoft or Google) also invest in voice AI. Respeecher's Ukrainian origin is a source of pride: it shows that despite adversity, Ukrainian tech can lead globally in innovation. The founders have expressed interest in eventually developing real-time voice conversion (currently it's not instant, it takes some processing time) and making the tech more accessible perhaps in creator tools. But they tread carefully to avoid misuse. In summary, Respeecher is a Ukrainian deep-tech startup that achieved what was once sci-fi - lending voices across time and space - and has done so responsibly. By powering some of Hollywood's most iconic moments with AI, it has cemented itself as a trailblazer in synthetic audio. As long as movies and games want to push creative boundaries, Respeecher's technology will likely be in the credits, helping the impossible become possible in voice. Sources: en.wikipedia.org, failory.com, techcrunch.com, youtube.com.