INSIGHTS / News

SETsquared Surrey member, Signapse, has secured significant seed funding from investors and Innovate UK to take its AI translation tech to new markets, a move which will see improved accessibility for deaf people around the world.  

Every day, approximately 87,000 people rely on British Sign Language (BSL) to communicate with friends and family. To ensure that this portion of the population can continue to communicate freely, Signapse uses generative AI to achieve photo-realism with accuracy to provide greater accessibility in public for the deaf community.

Its platform is already in use at airports and train stations across the UK and the US, where it translates real-time announcements and travel updates into British Sign Language (BSL) or American Sign Language (ASL).

The funding raised will be used to improve accessibility through building unconstrained translation for sign language, expanding into video translation whilst developing the ability to translate any English sentence into BSL using AI.

This recent funding round was led by Soulmates Ventures and Deeptech Seed Fund, with participation from other investors, including the Royal Association for Deaf People, Empirical Ventures, CEAS Investments, and The FSE Group.

Speaking on the news, Sally Chalk, CEO and Co-Founder, Signapse, said, “I couldn’t be more excited or proud about this next stage in our growth. It is a landmark opportunity, a once-in-a-lifetime moment, to build a transformative product.”

Ben Saunders, CTO and Co-Founder, Signapse, added, “This is an important chapter for Signapse, where we can expand our AI messaging from limited domains of discourse such as transport to more open-ended markets such as website design and video translation.”

Michal Sikyta, Investment Director, Soulmates Ventures said, “[Signapse’s] innovative solution is reflecting the daily challenges and needs of the deaf community. We are looking forward to supporting the Signapse team through our acceleration programme to amplify their distinctive real-time solution and enhance accessibility for deaf people globally.”

Visit www.signapse.ai to learn more about its AI-powered sign language translation software.