Signapse, a Generative AI Sign Language translation software company, today announced the closing of a new seed funding round of £2 million with £1.5 million from investors and £500k from Innovate UK. This round of funding was led by Soulmates Ventures and Deeptech Seed Fund, with participation from other investors, including the Royal Association for Deaf people, Empirical Ventures, CEAS Investments, and The FSE Group.
This new round of funding will be used to improve Deaf accessibility through building unconstrained translation for Sign Language. Specifically, the areas that the company will focus on are: Expanding into the Video Translation market to improve Deaf accessibility globally; building unconstrained translation for BSL with the ability to translate from any English sentence into BSL using AI; improve the quality of Signapse AI-generated Sign Language Videos.
I couldn’t be more excited and proud about this next stage in our growth. It is a landmark opportunity, a once in a lifetime moment, to build a transformative product. I would like to thank everyone that is, and has been, part of our amazing team.
Sally Chalk, Co-founder & CEO
This is an important chapter for Signapse, where we can expand our AI messaging from limited domains of discourse such as Transport to more open ended markets such as Website and Video Translation.
Ben Saunders, Co-founder & CTO
We at Soulmates Ventures are proud and excited to be a part of the Signapse endeavour in building unconstrained generative AI sign language translation. Their innovative solution is reflecting the daily challenges and needs of the Deaf people. We are looking forward to supporting the Signapse team through our acceleration programme to amplify their distinctive real-time solution and enhance accessibility for the Deaf community globally.
Michal Sikyta, Investment Director at Soulmates Ventures
We're very proud to have backed the Signapse team since the spinout stage and really pleased that their great progress has allowed us to co-lead this round.
Pearse Coyle, Founder & Partner at Deeptech Seed Fund
Over the past two years, Signapse has used Generative AI to create 5,000 BSL train announcements daily throughout the UK, as well as delivering over 4,000 manual BSL translations for clients in the website and video markets. More recently, Signapse has delivered Deaf accessibility to transport companies such as LNER Train Stations in the UK, and Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International (CVG) Airport in OH, USA.
