SAN DIEGO – Voice analytics technology company Clearspeed more than doubled its total funding base last month to expand its global footprint.
Following the company’s multiyear progress in international expansion and work with major insurance carriers in the U.S. and United Kingdom, as well as the U.S. military, founder and CEO Alex Martin said the time was right for Clearspeed’s first capital raise in three years.
“We set out to hit a series of goals and objectives between the last round and what would trigger this round, and we hit and exceeded those metrics from the market, key customer acquisition, product feedback, core technology humming at new levels,” Martin said. “So these things laid the foundation for, we have an incredible market in front of us, so we’ve got to grow.”
Clearspeed’s technology platform can analyze speech and imperceptible changes in voice characteristics to assess the risk profile of someone’s voice, helping businesses like banks and insurance companies detect and prevent potential fraud.
According to the company, its voice analysis technology has reduced the time to process insurance claims by half and the vetting process for government clients by 95%.
Clearspeed’s technology can process speech in more than 60 languages and is used in nearly 40 countries to detect potential fraud perpetuated both by humans and artificial intelligence-based voice replication and other synthetic speech tools.
“This investment propels Clearspeed into a bold new chapter,” Martin stated. “We’re doubling down on the markets where trust and speed matter most – government, defense, insurance, banking – and expanding globally to meet the growing demand for secure, high-integrity screening.”
New Funding from High-Profile Investor
The company announced that it secured $60 million in Series D funding, a sum that brings its investment total to $110 million since Clearspeed’s founding in 2016, when Martin, a 20-year U.S. Marine Corps veteran and former intelligence officer, sought to make it easier to build trust between parties while also preventing insider military attacks and white-collar crime.
Florida-based investment firm Align Private Capital led the round, with participation from several other investment firms as well as former CIA Director
and retired U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus, who joined as a multi-round investor.
Martin said he served under Petraeus during the Iraq War troop surge of 2007 and the two reconnected after Martin had founded Clearspeed, in which he said Petraeus grew interested.
“He makes investments when he sees things that he really believes in, and his capital obviously is really important to us,” Martin said. “But just having the ability to have his trust and do something that he sees as important to the world is what means the world to us.”
As part of the funding round, Align Private Capital co-founder and CEO Anna Nekoranec will also join Clearspeed’s board of directors.
“It’s rare to see a solution that can reduce fraud, mitigate security threats, and save significant costs without creating friction for the end user,” she stated.
Nekoranec has led Align Private Capital since 2014 and has more than two decades of experience as an investment executive, a background that Martin said will be invaluable as the company continues to grow.
Martin argued that the funding will support the company’s path to “hypergrowth” and, ultimately, profitability. While Martin said he doesn’t expect Clearspeed to require more investment funding for essential operations, the company will be strategic if it identifies opportunities to grow even faster.
“In terms of the building of the core technology and team, the attraction of the right team to grow this, and now the (total addressable market) before us, this is the capital that puts us into that next phase of growth,” Martin said. “The TAM does gets bigger, it seems, every month in terms of the problem and the problem that we’re solving, so it’s going to be a very exciting next couple years
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