Beyond Verbal raises $3 million to identify people’s moods from their voices

Beyond Verbal, an Israeli startup specializing in analyzing human emotion and traits based on voices, has raised $3 million in a round led by Hong Kong investment holding company KuangChi Science Ltd, with participation from Winnovation and Singulariteam. This closes the Series A round at $7 million over the past couple of years.

Founded out of Tel Aviv in 2012, but using technology based on decades of research, Beyond Verbal features emotion analytics technology that doesn’t consider the content or context of the spoken word, but instead looks for signs of anger, anxiety, arousal, and more through studying the intonation in a person’s voice. Use-cases include health assessment (establishing an individual’s mental wellbeing) and market research (identifying subjects’ true emotional state), while call centers could also use the smarts to improve relationships between operators and customers.

The company has now raised $10.8 million in total, including a $3.8 million seed round in 2014, and the latest cash injection will be used to boost its research and development in the health and wellness realm, as well as helping commercialize the product.

“This funding will enable us to enhance our world leadership position and continue our efforts into researching the connection between vocal intonation and health issues,” said Yuval Mor, CEO of Beyond Verbal.

In its few years since launching, Beyond Verbal has conducted studies with a number of high-profile organizations, including the Mayo Clinic, the University of Chicago, Scripps, and Hadassah Medical Center, and its historical data gathering has led to the collection of more than 2.5 million “emotion-tagged voices” across 40 languages.