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Why We’re Different

Voice is coming to every device, every platform and every household globally. The technology is becoming a critical part of nearly every technology stack and has a growing presence within the home as an AI assistant.

This calls for voice to be flexible, customizable, vendor-neutral, and privacy-focused; things that the proprietary voice assistants on the market today don’t offer.

Mycroft’s open platform differs from products like Alexa or Assistant in four important ways.  Data privacy, customization, user agency, and open data.

Privacy – Mycroft’s platform provides users with privacy by deleting queries in real time.  User data is not mined, aggregated, processed or sold.

Customization – The agent can be customized by changing the wake word, voice, and even the user experience.

User Agency – Mycroft is also the first assistant that embraces the concept of user agency–other voice assistants don’t represent users, they represent the companies that own them.  Mycroft is different, it represents end users.

Open Data – Mycroft is publishing data from users who have decided to opt-in.  This open data set is being used to improve wakeword spotting, speech to text transcription, natural language understanding, and speech synthesis.

Mycroft is a full feature voice platform that can be deployed anywhere, or used in conjunction with our devices. Our next generation hardware device, Mark II is a wireless smart speaker that plays music, set timers, search for general knowledge and has everything else the public has come to expect from a state-of-the-art voice assistant.

Mycroft AI Crowdfunding History

In the fall of 2015, we went to Kickstarter and Indiegogo to see if there was a market for our idea. We raised $193,000 USD and turned Mycroft from a project into a company. We fulfilled all crowdfunding orders in July of 2017 – putting Mark I units in the hands of 1,500 backers. Between these two dates, we’ve progressed rapidly, growing our team from 9 to 20, and have watched voice transform from a niche technology into the next big thing.

Our first crowdfunding campaign sold an advance prototype, Mark I. Still an open source, open hardware voice assistant, it was targeted at the makers and hackers. Mark II is for all consumers, flexible, customizable, open, and privacy-focused; something the current technologies don’t offer.

70k

Mycroft users in over 50 countries.

Milestones and Traction

Milestones and Traction

The success of our first Kickstarter and Indiegogo campaigns brought the realization that there was a significant market for an independent voice assistant--an AI for everyone.
Shortly after our first Kickstarter we were invited to join Techstars. After the program we shipped our first developer kits, and began growing an open source community. The strong demand from Kickstarter coupled with a solid play for enterprise sales allowed us to finish the year with $350,000 in financing and a $50,000 grant from Launch KC.

Customers

2017 brought an ever growing community, customers, and pivotal technical milestones.

Investment

Early in 2017 we accepted a strategic investment from Jaguar Land Rover and began working with their team in Portland on a test integration with the FTYPE sports car. Shortly thereafter we joined the prestigious 500 Startups program in San Francisco. Recently we completed negotiations with our first major corporate customer and hope to make a public announcement early next year. In between this, we oversubscribed our $750,000 Series Seed round, won another $50,000 grant at Techweek Nationals, and another $15,000 at Hello Tomorrow in Paris.

Community Growth

In July we fulfilled our crowdfunding orders, putting over 1,500 units into the hands of makers and hackers in 56 countries. We’ve continued to add thousands of users per month, and seen significant month over month increases in developer contributions to the Mycroft stack. We’ve had upwards of 20 releases and over 100 skills.

Technical Wins

Our technical team got several innovative machine learning solutions in place including a state of the art speech to text engine – DeepSpeech – which we built in partnership with Mozilla. In December we hit our final machine learning task; bringing speech synthesis in-house. This makes us one of 10 companies globally that has a complete intelligent assistant stack. The others are Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Tencent, Baidu, Samsung and Microsoft and Hound.

Going Forward

Over the next year, our team will work to make Mycroft the go-to voice technology in open source. When developers and enterprises think “open source and voice” Mycroft’s performance will earn the technology the top spot. We’re working to simplify developer onboarding - making it extremely easy for developers to install, use, and modify the technology. Our goal is a developer experience that is pleasant, simple, and satisfying.

Technical Milestones

  • Wake Word: Continue to improve the accuracy of the Precise Wake Word software, and pre-train several Wake Words.
  • Speech to Text: Continue to partner with Mozilla with a view to implementing DeepSpeech.
  • Intents and Skills: Continue nurturing the Mycroft developer community, providing on-ramps and tools to allow developers to easily build and share skills for Mycroft. We’re also looking to make it easier to integrate Mycroft with third-party services using common tools like OAuth.
  • Text to Speech: Continue improving the Mimic open source text to speech software, and make more voices available.
  • Personality: Allow customization of the Persona that Mycroft adopts for interaction style with a user - for example cheeky, serious or sarcastic.

Mycroft Launches an Open Alternative to Alexa and Assistant

Want a voice-enabled speaker, but concerned with transparency and privacy? Mycroft provides the answer.

Palo Alto, CA, January 25, 2018 – Mycroft AI has announced the pending release of an open source equivalent to Amazon Echo and Google Home. The Mark II smart speaker is powered by the Mycroft intelligent assistant, an open source full feature voice platform.

The company’s latest device, Mark II, has been designed to provide an open alternative to Google Home or Amazon Echo. The Mark II is a consumer-ready smart speaker with a built-in screen, optional camera, and state of the art microphone array with noise cancellation and beamforming.  These improvements to the Mark I improve wakeword spotting and allow user barge in.  

Mycroft’s open platform differs from products like Alexa or Siri in four important ways.  Data privacy, customization, user agency and open data. Mycroft’s platform provides users with privacy by deleting queries as they come in. The agent can also be customized by changing the wake word, voice and even the user experience. Mycroft is also the first assistant that embraces the concept of user agency–other voice assistants don’t represent users, they represent the companies that own them.  Mycroft is different, it represents end users. Finally, Mycroft is using data from users who have opted in to publish an open data set that can be used to improve wakeword spotting, speech to text transcription, natural language understanding and speech synthesis.

The Mark II is also completely open. Open hardware, open software and open data. Any company interested in deploying voice-enabled products can use the design as a baseline. Mycroft has already demonstrated its technology in a Jaguar F-Type sports car and is working with a number of major brands to deploy custom voice solutions.

“The Mark II will be a game changer,” says Mycroft CEO Joshua Montgomery, “deploying an intelligent personal assistant will no longer be a hundred million dollar proposition. Anyone with an internet connection will be able to have a custom voice agent and, importantly, they won’t have to give up their privacy to do it.”

 

Amazon sold an estimated 5.2 million Echo units in 2016, and the voice assistant was the best selling product across their e-commerce platform in 2017. Soon voice will be part of every platform, every device and every household globally.  The market is expected to reach $25 billion by 2020, but it lacks an open, neutral, independent, and privacy-minded alternative.

“We see voice as an important part of every human machine interface going forward,” said founder Joshua Montgomery, “our job is to make sure that everyone has access to the technology. We are democratizing voice and creating a level playing field for industry.”

 

Founded in 2015, Mycroft is the open source answer to Siri or Alexa.  Mycroft has strong relationships with the open source community and is rolling out across all of the major open operating systems in 2018.  Mycroft’s has received financial investments from Jaguar Land Rover, 500 Startups, Techstars and Kickstarter backers in more than 56 countries and 38 states.

Leadership

Michael Lewis

Michael Lewis

CEO

Michael has co-founded, developed, and sold two tech companies with over $200M in exits: Stellar Semiconductor, which made 3D graphics rendering chips (before they were cool), and Cryptic Studios, currently one of the most innovative and successful MMO game developers in the US.

His work passion is to foster creativity, participation and responsibility.
His vision is that by incorporating transparency and openness into all aspects of business we can improve resilience and sustainability.

Michael is an adamant believer and contributor to open-access AI and open source programming.

Derick Schweppe

Derick Schweppe

CDO

Derick has been with Mycroft since the launch of the first Kickstarter. He has designed everything from consumer electronics, housewares, soft goods, tools, and aircraft interiors. Before joining Mycroft he worked for clients like Coleman, Learjet, and Copco. Derick is responsible for all design disciplines within the company, leading the team that works on UI, UX, and hardware design.