Hume AI
Emotional Voice AI
Valuation
~$219M (Series B, 2024)
Total Funding
$130M+
Profit Status
Pre-profit, research stage
Employees
~60
About Hume AI
Hume AI is a research lab and startup building emotionally intelligent voice AI. Its Empathic Voice Interface (EVI) is a conversational speech model that measures and responds to the emotion, tone, and prosody in a user's voice, aiming to make AI interactions more natural and human-aware. Founded by former Google DeepMind researcher Alan Cowen.
Company History
Founded 2021 by Alan Cowen, a former Google DeepMind and UC Berkeley researcher known for semantic space theory of emotion. Released the Empathic Voice Interface (EVI) in 2024 — the first conversational AI that responds to vocal emotion. Raised $50M Series B (Mar 2024) led by EQT Ventures at a $219M valuation. Launched Octave, an LLM-based text-to-speech model, and EVI 3 in 2025 with improved naturalness and voice customization.
Company Timeline
2021
Founded by Alan Cowen (ex-Google DeepMind)
Mar 2024
$50M Series B at $219M valuation; EVI launched
2025
Octave TTS and EVI 3 released with voice customization
Products & Services
Company Details
Focus Area
Emotional Voice AI
Stage
Founded
2021
Headquarters
New York, NY
Employees
~60
Financial Overview
Total Funding
$130M+
Valuation
~$219M (Series B, 2024)
Profit Status
Pre-profit, research stage
Funding Rounds
- Series A$50M2022Union Square Ventures, Comcast Ventures
- Series B$50MMar 2024EQT Ventures, Union Square Ventures
Key Investors
Key People
- Alan Cowen (CEO, co-founder)
- Janet Ho (COO)