Acquired by Amazon
Industries Artificial Intelligence (AI)AudioMessagingMobileSpeech RecognitionTelecommunicationsHeadquarters Regions East Coast, Southern US Founded Date May 2006 Founders Igor Jablokov, Victor Jablokov Operating Status Closed Last Funding Type Debt Financing
Company Type For Profit
Contact Email info@yapinc.com
Yap pioneered the world's first high accuracy, automated speech recognition platform for "long duration" dialogues. Long duration dialogues are conversations and audio content ranging from 5 seconds to several hours. Yap specializes in accurately transcribing these dialogues for a variety of different scenarios including
voicemail-to-text, conference call transcriptions, analysis of customer phone calls and voice-activated mobile messaging.
The company was a TechCrunch finalist in 2007. Their management team previously worked on Apple's iPod, Honda's navigational systems, IBM's ViaVoice, Microsoft's Tellme speech division and Nuance's Dragon products.
Yap white labels its SaaS platform -- i.e., Yap Speech Cloud(TM) -- to enable diverse use cases, including messaging, call analytics and voicemail-to-text. For example, Microsoft uses Yap for voice-based mobile messaging applications. Their end users can say anything they want to and have Yap's platform transcribe it into text (far more convenient than typing on the fumbling with a devices keypad while driving). MetroPCS also is a Yap customer. Cincinnati Bell, a regional carrier, uses Yap-based technology to convert subscriber voicemails into text. The carrier was a competitive win away from SpinVox (now Nuance). Part of the allure for Yap's service is that it's completely automated. That means there is no need for humans listening to messages, typing them out, and then sending them back out, giving Yap a real advantage in ensuring privacy. Because Yap is completely machine powered, the company is able to offer lower costs, higher speeds and greater consistency.
Transaction Name Yap acquired by AmazonAcquired by AmazonAnnounced Date Sep 8, 2011