Dropbox buys and shuts down voiceover startup Umano

Dropbox has acquired Umano, a startup that provides voice actors who can read content for recordings that can be added to websites and applications. Umano announced the news today in a posting on its website.

The service is shutting down.

“Umano will continue running for the next 30 days until June 12, 2015,” the posting says. “All annual Premium subscribers have those 30 days to request a refund for the remainder of their subscriptions here.”

The posting does not make it clear how Umano’s tools will be integrated into Dropbox — only that it will work with Dropbox’s team “to help people get more done together.”

Earlier in the day Umano informed customers that the service was shutting down — but it did not mention an acquisition by Dropbox.

Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.

San Francisco-based Dropbox has been on an acquisition tear in recent years, including CloudOn, Pixelapse, and Predictive Edge.

In 2013 Umano announced a $1 million seed round. Birchmere Ventures and Digital Garage co-led the round. Google employees and early Facebook adviser Karl Jacob also participated.

In December 2013 VentureBeat itself partnered with Umano to bring recordings of articles to VentureBeat’s website.

And in December 2014 Umano said that writers could narrate their own content through the service and access analytics tools to track engagement.

Umano was the main product from San Francisco startup SoThree.