As Podcastle raises $13.5M, its founder credit AI-driven development in Armenia’s ‘Mini-Silicon Valley’

Podcastle, a podcasting platform that has boosted its product with numerous generative AI-driven options, has raised $13.5 million in a Collection A funding spherical led by Mosaic Ventures.

Additionally collaborating had been present Podcastle traders RTP World, Level 9 Capital, Sierra Ventures, and Andrew Ng’s AI Fund. Squarespace CEO Anthony Casalena and Moonbug Media CEO René Rechtman additionally participated within the spherical.

The platform now claims to have round 1,000,000 creators utilizing its instruments, a lot of which have AI-driven options, though this determine has not been independently verified. 

In an announcement, Simon Levene, Co-founder and Accomplice of Mosaic Ventures commented: “Arto and the team at Podcastle have built a leading product, and are already showing signs of organic growth that we believe will only accelerate in the years ahead.”

In a dialog with Arto Yeritsyan, Founder and CEO of Podcastle, instructed me: “Final summer time we launched podcasts for groups. So we’re shifting from single-user expertise to multiplayer expertise. So this funding is aimed to scale that. We noticed this scale with 10x development final yr. So principally, we’ll be scaling that.

Podcastle affords Revoice, a generative AI voice cloning software; Magic Mud AI, to enhance audio high quality; the Podcastle Internet hosting Hub, and Podcastle for Groups.

He stated the platform is concentrating on long-form content material creation, each audio and video: “Basically anything that produces content, which is not like Tiktok-type of short-form content. We help teams collaborate, and it covers the entire workflow from ideation into actually getting it to the audience, meaning you can record on our platform, you can then edit or invite somebody to edit.”

He additionally thinks the platform differentiates itself from opponents by providing real-time collaboration and AI functionalities. 

“We compete with Riverside on the recording side and Descript on the editing side. Descript is desktop-based which you need to install on your computer, whereas we’re web based and covering the entire flow. So our offering is being a one-stop shop with real-time collaboration on the Web. As a comparison, we’d be like Sketch versus Figma. Sketch needed to be installed on your computer, not really web-based or cloud-based where you could collaborate, and Figma basically came in as a collaborative product. So we are pretty similar but for video and audio content creation.”

He plans to make a advantage of each these collaborative options and on-line modifying: “In our case, you have the entire workflow within the same product. Podcasters can invite editors and the team can make the edits and can then can invite the marketer to create assets like short-form videos of the long-form video and share it to social, right from the same platform without leaving.”

I additionally requested him what are the most important traits in podcasting proper now. 

“The biggest trend is what we call studio sound. Our tools can generate a ‘pseudo quality audio’ from any input. So you can record something on your phone and the output that you get is almost like you’ve been in a studio, even if you’re podcasting with three people, with each of them having a different environment, different distance from the microphone, different noise levels.”

He says these instruments had been constructed as a result of video podcasting is getting highly regarded on YouTube, the place it’s being pushed, so Podcastle launched video instruments to cowl this demand: “Regardless of what camera you use, you can generate DSLR camera quality. You can add AI blur or a bokeh effect.”

One other massive pattern is advertising, he says: “We met this with the ability to create a lot of shorts and distribute those to all the social platforms. AI gives you the opportunity to do that automatically, rather than manually, by generating all the assets that you need to share in different platforms to attract users to your long-form content.”

He says customers and companies are beginning to make their choices not by scrolling via web sites however by watching their content material: “They’re going to their YouTube channels, podcasts, and listening to that and then making a decision, as opposed to the old ways of doing that.”

I additionally requested him if he thinks Armenia is changing into extra of a tech hub, given unicorn firms like Picsart have emerged from there. Podcastle’s engineering staff operates out of Armenia, which is quick changing into a brand new European tech hub, having been boosted by the institution of workplaces by massive firms like Adobe and Nvidia of their seek for programming expertise, particularly in AI.

“Yes, definitely. We’re basically becoming a small Silicon Valley here. You will see companies like Adobe building offices. The CEO of Adobe was here last year. We have Nvidia here, and people from companies like Picsart are starting their own companies. I was a VP of Engineering at Picsart for about eight years,” he says.

The corporate has additionally just lately employed Allan Rechtman, a former VP at Canva, as its Chief Industrial Officer; Damian Saccoas VP of Progress (previously Prezi); and Dmitry Kopylovsky has been promoted to Chief Advertising and marketing Officer.