Babbly, a Toronto, Canada-based SaaS startup that developed a speech and language development platform for infants using artificial intelligence (AI), raised $2.5 million (CAD 3.2 million) in an all-equity seed round that closed in March.
Representing Babbly’s first institutional raise, the financing was led by Esplanade Ventures and with participation from American Family Insurance Institute for Social Impact and Trend Forward Capital.
With the aid of fresh funds, Babbly intends to bolster its offering to touch on more stages of child development.
Esplanade Ventures’ Sheldon Elman will join Babbly’s board of directors.
Company: Village Voice Technologies Inc.
Raised: $2.5M
Round: Seed Round
Funding Month: March 2022
Lead Investors: Esplanade Ventures
Additional Investors: American Family Insurance Institute for Social Impact, and Trend Forward Capital
Company Website: https://www.babbly.co/
Software Category: AI-powered baby development tracker
About the Company: Founded in 2018 by Maryam Nabavi (CEO) and Carla Margalef Bentabol (CTO), Babbly is developing a speech and language development platform for infants using artificial intelligence (AI). Babbly collects video and audio recordings from parents and leverages machine learning models to analyze children’s speech patterns. Babbly claims that its technology can classify up to three kinds of babbling, in addition to other forms of speech, such as infants’ cooing or crying. The platform is also able to recognize the back-and-forth interactions between a child and an adult, which the startup refers to as Turn-Taking. Backed by a scientific advisory team comprising speech and language pathologists and pediatricians, Babbly also offers activities and tips for parents to help children develop language and social skills at any age.
Source: https://betakit.com/babbly-secures-3-2-million-cad-to-scale-speech-development-software-for-children/ https://www.babbly.co/blog/how-our-seed-funding-will-help-tackle-one-of-parentings-greatest-challenges