Naver D2SF announced on the 10th that it has made a pre-seed investment in Podonos (CEO Bae Su-hyeon), a startup developing a voice AI model evaluation solution. This investment was led by US venture capital firm Serac Ventures, with joint participation from Naver D2SF and KAIST Youth Startup Investment Holdings in Korea. This marks Podonos' first institutional investment.
With the proliferation of AI technology, demand for objective evaluation and verification of AI model performance is rapidly increasing. In particular, voice AI, a key area of Podonos's expertise, is seeing increasing adoption across diverse industries, including customer service, content creation, and voice synthesis. Voice AI requires multi-layered evaluation factors beyond pronunciation accuracy, including intonation, emotional expression, user preference, and ambient noise processing, necessitating specialized quantitative verification solutions.
Podonos operates a service that provides customized voice AI evaluation results within 12 hours, leveraging its proprietary AI automation solution and a global workforce of 150,000 evaluators. Key clients include not only AI model development companies but also service providers leveraging AI technology, each leveraging Podonos's solutions as tools for performance improvement and optimized model exploration.
Podonos is currently collaborating with international voice AI startups like Resemble AI, Play AI, and Sanas AI, demonstrating its technological prowess and reliability. The company's evaluation results are increasingly being cited in tech media and online communities. Going forward, Podonos plans to expand its client base to diverse sectors like healthcare, finance, gaming, and advertising, while also expanding its evaluation scope to include diverse modalities like visuals and text.
Naver D2SF Center Director Yang Sang-hwan said, “As the importance of AI tools for AI is increasing, Podonos is a team with the rare ability to quantitatively evaluate voice AI,” adding, “We expect scalability in the global market as well as synergy in technological collaboration with Naver.”
Bae Soo-hyun, CEO of Podonos, said, “Through this investment, we will begin to fully advance our developer recruitment and evaluation automation technology,” and added, “Based on our collaboration with Naver D2SF, we will establish a foundation for providing high-quality voice services.”
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