AI language tutor startup Speak raises $78M at $1B valuation from OpenAI, others

AI language tutor startup Speak has raised $78M in a new funding round, at a $1B valuation.

The Series C round was led by Accel with support from existing investors including the OpenAI Startup Fund, Khosla Ventures, and Y Combinator among others.

Speak said on Tuesday that the funding marked its second preempted raise this year, with the company’s valuation doubling in the six months since its last round. The San Francisco-based startup has raised $162M to date.

“Speak has emerged as a standout player in consumer AI, demonstrating exceptional growth and market potential,” said Ben Quazzo, partner at Accel.

Quazzo will join Speak’s board.

Speak noted that this year it created over 25 million personalized lessons for its users, adapting to their pace and style of learning. Over the next year, Speak plans to become a dynamic learning experience powered by its underlying learning engine, the latest Large language models, or LLMs, and advancements in its speech technology.

Speak’s Co-Founder and CEO Connor Zwick said that since the company’s previous funding round, they have introduced an enterprise offering called Speak for Business to bring English learning to employers everywhere.

Generative AI services have become the talk of the town since the launch of Microsoft (MSFT)-backed OpenAI’s ChatGPT in 2022. Globally, companies have launched their own LLMs, which can provide services such as content, image, video, and voice generation, to name a few.