Hume AI, a New York-based startup aiming to give technology the emotional intelligence required to understand and care for human well-being, has raised $12.7 million in Series A funding.
Union Square Ventures led the round, with Northwell Holdings, Comcast Ventures, LG Technology Ventures, Wisdom Ventures, and Evan Sharp also participating (Pinterest co-founder).
Hume AI, led by Dr. Alan Cowen, an established expert in affective science, provides accurate and comprehensive AI/ML tools for understanding vocal and nonverbal communication, including speech prosody, vocal bursts, and facial expressions, as well as how emotions are expressed in language.
The company has research collaborations with labs at Mt. Sinai, Boston University Medical Center, and Harvard Medical School to investigate how using Hume AI’s tools to analyze patients’ nuanced vocal and facial expressions can improve healthcare outcomes for patients. Standardized patient screening and triaging, more targeted diagnosis and treatment of mental health conditions, patient monitoring, and crisis prediction are some of the applications.
The funds will be used by the company, which provides its datasets and models via a unified API platform, to meet the demand for its technology, which is based on the analysis of human expressive behavior in images, audio, video, or text.
Hume AI has tripled its revenue growth quarter over quarter since its public launch in January 2021.
