Company: Papercup
Founder: Jesse Shemen and Jiameng Gao
Website: papercup.com
The Business: Papercup’s voice translation technology allows all of the world’s video to be watched in any language, using state of the art AI and machine learning technology.
About Papercup
Papercup have invented a machine learning based text to speech system capable of translating people’s unique voices and ways of expression into other languages. Combining our market leading research with our content translation product, we allow content creators to reach the global audience that is desperate to watch content in their native language. The tool is simple, yet powerful: video content producers upload their videos, specify the target language, and receive a translated version with a synthetic voiceover indistinguishable from human voices.
They have helped content creators from all around the world reach previously unreachable audiences. DIY Creators is an example English channel which was launched in Spanish. The dedicated Spanish channel on its own reached 300k subscribers and hit over 25 million since inception, generating substantial and previously inaccessible revenue for the creator.
The tool isn’t limited to semi-pro creators. Papercup partnered with Sky News over the last year to bring a Spanish Sky News channel to YouTube. The channel recently hit a viral trend and reached over 10 million people in Spanish-speaking countries who were able to watch dependable Sky News videos on the coronavirus as it was unfolding.
Backed by leading venture capitalists in the last year (including Local Globe, Sands Capital, Entrepreneur First) and media companies (Sky and Guardian Media Ventures), we’ve demonstrated the ingenuity and novelty of the AI system we’ve built to date and how it’s already allowing 10’s of millions of people to consume content they would have otherwise not been able to access.
