Seattle‑based startup Nuance, founded by three former Apple researchers, has raised $50 million in a Series A round to build an audiovisual‑to‑audiovisual AI model. The funding was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from Accel, Nvidia’s NVentures, and South Park Commons.
Nuance aims to create AI chatbots capable of real‑time reactions, microexpressions, and human‑like nuances, addressing the latency and awkwardness of current voicebots.
Nuance Eyes AI Interviewers, Sales Reps, and Tutors
CEO Fangchang Ma explained that existing systems rely on patching together voice‑to‑text, large language models, and text‑to‑voice, which strips away natural conversational flow. Nuance’s approach integrates audio and video input/output into a single model.
The company collects training data in‑house or through partners, recording natural conversations with clean audiovisual separation.
While still pre‑product, Nuance envisions applications such as AI interview practice, presentation coaching, language learning, and enterprise use cases like virtual interviewers, sales reps, and customer support.
Founded last year, Nuance previously raised $10 million in seed funding. The new capital will expand its eight‑person R&D team and support go‑to‑market hires. A research preview of its model is expected later this year.
