Anyone who’s worked from home has dealt with background noise on a video call — a crying baby, a barking dog, the chirp of a dying fire alarm battery.
And occasionally, you might be dealing with landscapers taking a jackhammer to your back patio.
Such was the case with TechNexus Venture Collaborative CEO Terry Howerton, who recalled a time when crews were working so loudly outside his kitchen window that he could hardly hear himself think during a work video call. The person on the other end of the call, Christine Schyvinck, the CEO of audio giant Shure, a long-time TechNexus corporate partner, was none the wiser.
Howerton was using Krisp, an AI-powered audio app for meetings and calls that eliminates background noise.
Krisp was founded in 2017 by former Twilio head of product security Davit Baghdasaryan and serial entrepreneur Arto Minasyan. The two, frustrated with background noise during their work meetings, set out to build a tool that would use machine learning to block out any sound that wasn’t the voice on the other end of a video call.
Born long before the Covid pandemic, Krisp grew in popularity among home-office workers and call centers, which relied on Krisp’s technology to reduce the sound of nearby agent voices, keyboard typing and other sounds that contributed to background noise at call centers.
As the pandemic changed the way people worked, Krisp was ready. It was named one of TIME’s best inventions of 2020 and was among Forbes’ most promising AI startups the same year. It raised a $14 million Series A round in early 2021 from backers including TechNexus.
“Covid was good timing for us,” Baghdasaryan said, adding that the company was closing major B2B deals in as little as a week as workplaces shifted to remote. “There was an urgency [in the market] that was good from a business growth perspective. Covid helped the company a lot, we were able to build on that foundation.”
Krisp, now at 140 employees and profitable, has continued to grow the business. It has launched new products, including AI meeting transcription, note taking and recording tools. It offers AI accent localization for call centers that enhances comprehension between customers and non-native English speaking agents by adjusting accents in real-time. And it provides an AI interpreter services that gives instant real-time voice translation to call centers.
Krisp today processes around 80 billion minutes of audio every month, Baghdasaryan said, and it has amassed thousands of enterprise customers. Its largest customer has deployed Krisp to 40,000 agents in its call center.
“We have enormous potential to grow further,” Baghdasaryan said. “We are heads down building new things and we're very excited about the road map and the opportunity.”