Guilford-based sign language translation software startup Signapse has raised £2 million in seed funding led by Czech fund Soulmates Ventures and Irish Deeptech Seed Fund. The fresh capital will help Signapse to enhance accessibility for deaf people by building unconstrained translation for British Sign Language (BSL), as Vestbee was informed.
- Founded in 2022 by Sally Chalk, Benjamin Saunders, and Richard Bowden, Signapse is a sign language translation software company that utilizes generative AI to enhance accessibility for the deaf community by automatically converting digital information into sign language.
- Signapse employs a team of 22 and claims that over the past two years, it has created 5,000 BSL train announcements daily throughout the UK and delivered over 4,000 manual BSL translations for clients in the website and video markets. Moreover, Signapse provides deaf accessibility to transport companies such as LNER Train Stations and CVG Airport.
Details of the deal
- Signapse raised a new seed funding round of £2 million, with £1.5 million from investors, and £500,000 from the UK Government. The investors who led the round include Prague-based VC Soulmates Ventures, which invests in innovative startups across Europe, and Deeptech Seed Fund, a Dublin-based venture capital firm that funds tech startups.
“We are looking forward to supporting the Signapse team through our acceleration programme to amplify their distinctive real-time solution and enhance accessibility in transport, mass media, TV, streaming services and others for the Deaf community globally,” Investment Director at Soulmates Ventures, Michal Sikyta, commented in a statement.
- The Royal Association for Deaf People, Empirical Ventures, CEAS Investments, and FSE Group also joined the round.
- With the fresh capital, Signapse will concentrate on three main areas:
- Expanding into the video translation market to enhance deaf accessibility globally.
- Building unconstrained translation for BSL with the ability to translate from any English sentence into BSL using AI.
- Improving the quality of Signapse AI-generated sign language videos.
