Samsung Acquires Innoetics, a Text-to- Speech Tech Startup

Samsung has acquired a Greek tech
startup called Innoetics. The
financial details of the buyout deal
were not disclosed, but Samsung
reportedly paid under $43 million for
the acquisition. Innoetics specialises
in developing an advanced text-to-
speech and voice-to-speech
technology that among other things
can mimic a person’s voice just by
listening to it – making AI voices
more human-like than before.
How Samsung is planning to
leverage from this acquisition
remains to be seen. Samsung may
use this technology to improve Bixby,
or integrate it in its rumoured
Amazon Echo competitor. The
company could also use this unique
technology to introduce a completely
new product category, as Samsung
is not known to shy away from
branching out into many fields.
Samsung confirmed the acquisition
to TechCrunch. In an emailed
statement, the company said,
“Samsung has agreed to acquire
Innoetics. Samsung is always
exploring ways to deepen our
relationships with companies like
Innoetics whose technologies present
an opportunity to strengthen
Samsung’s capabilities.”
Innoetics was founded in 2006 and
delves in developing character-heavy
and expressive synthetic voices that
can read aloud audiobooks, act in
games, or even narrate fairy tales.
According to TechCrunch, the
technology by Innoetics is very
advanced, so much so that it can
“listen to a person speaking, train on
what that person is saying, and then
read out a piece of completely
unrelated text in that same voice.”