Speak Talks Up $78 Million Series C

SAN FRANCISCO &&num;8212&semi; Speak, an app that helps tutor users in English, has raised &dollar;78 million Series C round at a &dollar;1 billion valuation&period;&NewLine;Accel led the round with support from existing investors including the OpenAI Startup Fund, Khosla Ventures, and Y Combinator among others&period; This marks the company&&num;8217&semi;s second raise this year, with its valuation doubling in the six months since the last round&period; Speak has now raised &dollar;162 million to date&period;&NewLine;While language learning has evolved from traditional software to mobile apps, these solutions failed to solve the core challenge&colon; being able to actually communicate out loud in the language&period; Our users consistently tell us the same story – despite years of studying English, they couldn&&num;8217&semi;t speak comfortably until discovering Speak&period; We&&num;8217&semi;ve engineered a breakthrough in spoken fluency by combining our proprietary learning method with advanced AI that adapts to each user&&num;8217&semi;s needs, making true fluency accessible to so many more people&period; So far this year, users have already spoken more than one billion sentences with Speak&period; And in 2025, we plan to bring Speak to many, many more countries&period;&NewLine;&&num;8220&semi;Speak has emerged as a standout player in consumer AI, demonstrating exceptional growth and market potential,&&num;8221&semi; said Ben Quazzo, partner at Accel, who led the investment round and is joining Speak&&num;8217&semi;s Board of Directors&period; &&num;8220&semi;With its strategic expansion into global and enterprise markets, coupled with effective, personalized language learning at scale and an experienced team, Speak is well-positioned to dominate this new category&period;&&num;8221&semi;&NewLine;&OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;Our 2022 investment in Speak was driven by a shared vision of revolutionizing language learning with AI,” said OpenAI Startup Fund partner Ian Hathaway&period; &OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;We’re thrilled to see their world class AI talent and unique product vision create transformative learning experiences for a rapidly growing userbase worldwide&period; We’re excited to see Speak set new standards in AI learning&period;”&NewLine;

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