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Emotech
Multimodal AI solutions for digital avatars and education
About Emotech
Emotech is an artificial intelligence company founded in London in 2014 by Chelsea Chen, Hongbin Zhuang, and Jan Medvesek, focused on developing multimodal AI technologies that redefine human-computer interaction. Initially, the company developed Olly, a personal social robot with an evolving AI-based personality, which won four CES Innovation Awards in 2017.
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Following the launch of Olly, Emotech pivoted to a B2B model, licensing its core AI software and expanding its services. The company's business model now involves providing bespoke AI solutions, APIs, and SDKs to various industries, including education, smart homes, and government sectors. Key offerings include a multimodal AI English teaching assistant for pronunciation and fluency assessment, multilingual conversational AI, generative AI avatars with realistic lip-syncing, and natural language processing platforms. Emotech has gained particular recognition for its Arabic speech AI solutions, which support multiple dialects with high accuracy. Revenue is generated through product sales, licensing, and service contracts with clients that include enterprises and government entities.
Co-founder and CEO Hongbin Zhuang previously worked at Renren.com, helping it become one of China's largest social networks, and holds a Master's in Human-Computer Interaction from University College London. Co-founder Chelsea Chen has a background in marketing and entrepreneurship, with a Master's from Goldsmiths, University of London, and experience at OgilvyOne. The company has raised $10.7M in funding from investors including Yinghe Capital and Lightning Capital.
At a glance
- Status
- Operational
- Founded
- 2015
- Headquarters
- London, United Kingdom
- Employees
- 50
- Open positions
- 1
- Dealroom signal
- 74.0/100
- Industry
- Gaming
- Sector
- Robotics, Consumer Electronics, Speech Recognition
- Technology
- Artificial Intelligence, Hardware, Big Data, Deep Tech, Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, Computer Vision, Recognition Technology, IoT InternetOfThings
- Business model
- Manufacturing
- Client focus
- b2c
Knowledge graph
More headlines
Funding history
Company financing events and reported valuations.
| Deal type | Date | Amount | Valuation | Investors | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SUPPORT PROGRAM✓Other financing | Jan 2018 | $0 | — | Tech Nation | — |
| SERIES A✓Equity / VC | Aug 2016 | $10M | $40M | Lightning Capital · ALLIANCE CAPITAL | ↗ |
Growth signals
Latest recorded traffic for Emotech is 4.2K monthly website visits, up 13.5% over the last three months. Emotech's team grew 0% over the past year.
Open positions
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Investments and acquisitions
Recent portfolio relationships for companies that also act as investors or acquirers.
Investors
From Dealroom's funding and investor records, grouped by the round each investor first entered.
Series A2 investors entered at this stage
- LCLightning Capital
ALLIANCE CAPITAL
Other known investors3 additional known investors
Tech Nation
Grow London- LCLanTing Capital
Source: Dealroom Talent Intelligence.
Global footprint
team presence
Market sentiment
An AI-synthesised read of the highest-engagement posts about Emotech on X, ranked by likes and reposts, corporate channels excluded.
Reading the room on X — pulling top posts and synthesizing themes…
Source: X recent search ranked by engagement (likes + retweets) · Synthesis by Claude · Cached for 1 hour
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