Metaplanet invests in New York-based AI startup Hume

Jaan Tallinn’s fund Metaplanet has invested in a New York-based platform Hume, which integrates emotional intelligence into artificial intelligence applications. The €46,2M round was led by Swedish EQT Ventures, with the participation from Union Square Ventures, Northwell Holdings, Comcast Ventures, LG Technology Ventures, and some US business angels.

Founded in New York in 2021 by former Google AI researcher Alan Cowen, Hume has developed an Empathic Voice Interface (EVI) that can be integrated into any application or research study that involves human data: audio, video, images, or text. The startup's empathic large language model measures over 50 dimensions of emotional expression in nuanced facial and vocal behavior. It can capture boredom and desire in the face, vocal expressions, continuous emotional intonation in speech (joy, concentration, surprise, satisfaction, anger, etc.), and emotions conveyed in the text.

Hume's empathic large language model is trained on data from millions of human interactions and uses vocal tones to understand when the user has finished speaking. It can also predict the user's preferences and learn to give an optimized vocal response that sounds more natural to the user.

Hume will use the investment to scale the team, accelerate its AI research, and continue the development of its empathic voice interface. EVI will be available to the public later this month.

Metaplanet Holdings is an early-stage investment firm of Skype’s founder Jaan Tallinn. It has 163 companies in its venture investment portfolio.