Arabic Speech Tech Startup Kanari AI Scores with US & Qatari Investors

For the longest time, the Arabic language was excluded from the many advances in AI, machine learning and tech in general. While this has and slowly continues to change, few companies on the planet have taken on this gap from the very core than Kanari AI, which has just announced a pre-seed funding round of $475K from Qatar Science and Technology Park and the US-based Alchemist Accelerator.

Based in California but with offices in Qatar, UAE and Egypt - as well as India - the startup launched in 2020, but has made impressive leaps in pioneering Arabic dialectical speech technology, which can be applied to a number of different uses. 

While Kanari AI's core tech is automatic text-to-speech recognition and is currently being used for transcription, captioning, subtitling, analytics, media monitoring, accessibility and security purposes the startup's ambitions are taking it into other aspects of AI-driven dialectical speech technology, beyond Arabic, too.

Founded by Ryan Carmichael (CEO), Giri Nagaraja (CTO) and Qatar's Ahmed Ali (Chief Scientist), the startup claims to be able to recognise 19 different Arabic dialects and its work has seen them strike-up partnerships with tech giants, Microsoft and NVidia, as well as the UN and the Qatar Foundation.

The tech has the potential to be used in a range of fields and industries, including everything from media and education, to security, call centers and legal services, and interested parties can request a demo at kanari.ai.