Keyvan Mohajer is a Canadian entrepreneur and computer scientist who is known as the founder and CEO of SoundHound, an audio and speech recognition company that develops voice-recognition, natural language understanding, sound-recognition and search technologies.
Education
Keyvan Mohajer graduated at the University of Toronto with a Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering in 2000 and has acquired his Master’s and Ph.D. from Stanford University in 2005.
Early career
In 1999, Keyvan Mohajer first worked as Chief Technology Officer at InsuranceHotline.com. The following year, Mohajer founded Zumo Software and also served as the Chief Technology Officer. Zumo Software produces administrative database management and web-based course communication software for educational organizations. Mohajer left InsuranceHotline.com to start his company.
SoundHound
On September 1, 2005, Keyvan Mohajer co-founded SoundHound Inc., along with Majid Emami. SoundHound is an audio and speech recognition company and was born in a Stanford dorm room. Mohajer has been the Chief Executive Officer since the beginning of the company.
The company’s Midomi app was rebranded in 2009 as SoundHound. On June 4, 2010, SoundHound announced that Kathleen McMahon, former vice president at Shazam, joined its executive team as vice president of sales and marketing. On August 25, 2011, SoundHound has signed a deal with digital music service provider Spotify to allow SoundHound users in Europe to instantly access the latter’s catalog (of over 15 million tracks).
In 2012, SoundHound declared it had more than 100 million users worldwide and in 2014 became the original music-search product available as a wearable. Later, SoundHound became the first music recognition service shipping in autos in the new 2015 Genesis, in a partnership with Hyundai. By May 2016, SoundHound had more than 300 million users globally. In 2018, SoundHound Inc. announced partnerships with Hyundai, Honda, and Mercedes-Benz, to produce voice interaction for their products using its Houndify voice AI platform.
On January 13, 2014, SoundHound published a partnership with South Korea’s leading automobile manufacturing group, the Hyundai Motor Group, to embed the SoundHound music and sound recognition application straight into select Hyundai and Kia vehicles. On October 1, 2014, SoundHound partnered with TouchTunes to bring on-premise music control to mobile app users. On November 11, 2014, SoundHound launched a new version of its music search, discovery and play app.
On December 15, 2015, SoundHound launched Houndify platform to add a voice interface to other apps and devices. The Hound app is comparable in some ways to voice-controlled products like Amazon’s Echo and Apple’s Siri, but with a focus on quickly answering complex queries. On July 13, 2017, Mohajer was recognized as one of the 40 under 40 winners in 2017 form the Silicon Valley Business Journal.
Funding Rounds
On May 31, 2006, SoundHound raised in a Series A funding of $5 million from investors like Signatures Capital, Global Catalyst Partners, Felicis Ventures, and Amidzad Partners. On May 1, 2008, SoundHound rose in a Series B funding of $7 million led by Walden Venture Capital, and other investors like Global Catalyst Partners and TransLink Capital. On August 4, 2009, SoundHound raised $4 million in a venture round funding from Walden Venture Capital.
On October 12, 2011, SoundHound secured in a Series C funding of $24 million from existing investors like Walden Venture Capital, TransLink Capital, and Felicis Ventures. On January 31, 2017, SoundHound secured in a Series D funding of $75 million, led by Nvidia GPU Ventures with existing investors like Walden Venture Capital and TransLink Capital. The funding round has collected $725 million of its pre-money valuation.
Other investors include Samsung Catalyst Fund, Sompo Japan Nipponkoa Insurance Inc., SharesPost Investment Management, RSI Fund (the VC arm of Recruit Holdings), Nomura Holdings, Inc., Naver Corporation, Kleiner Perkins, MKaNN, and Line Corporation. Mohajer said that the investment would accelerate growth through investments in international expansion and product development for its collective artificial intelligence technology through its Houndify platform.
On May 3, 2018, the company raised an additional of $100 million round of funding to strive to make its Houndify platform a third neutral option compared to Alexa and Google Assistant, led by Tencent Holdings Limited. Other investors include Midea Group, Hyundai Motor Company, France Telecom (now Orange S.A.), and Daimler. The latest investment has reached a total of $1 billion in its pre-money valuation.
SoundHound has raised a total of $215 million in its 6 funding rounds.