Speech Industry Award Winners Fuel a Market on the Rise
The speech industry is thriving like never before thanks to innovative companies that have entered the space in the past few years. These ambitious startups have taken on some of the long-standing challenges that have held the speech industry back for decades and succeeded where others have failed. We recognize 10 of these companies as this year’s recipients of our annual Speech Industry Awards.
Their efforts in the past year have left an indelible mark on the entire speech industry, brought the technology to new heights and new markets, and generated a lot of buzz along the way.
Our awards this year remove all doubt about artificial intelligence, solidly confirming that AI is no longer the aspirational stuff of science-fiction but rather a real-world technology that has plenty of uses in our modern, automated, instant-gratification-craving, customer-centric present.
Without exception, every winning vendor has AI embedded into its technology. A few of them even have AI in their company names, centering their branding and corporate identity on it.
Their AI-fueled achievements include a dubbing breakthrough that enables speech to be translated in up to 20 languages while maintaining the original speaker’s unique voice and vocal characteristics; a voice biomarker technology that can detect physical, mental, and emotional health conditions; a speech recognition system that can instantly adapt to industry jargon; AI voice assistants that can conversationally guide customers through complex inquiries; a voice commerce ecosystem that enables consumers to access goods and services through natural conversations with their cars; and a technology that is making digital content more accessible to those with difficulties speaking, seeing, or hearing.
Again, these technologies are not theoretical. They are real, and they are being used right now. And again, they’re fueling unprecedented growth in the speech technology industry, as shown by recent market research reports that came out in just the past few months. Take, for example, the text-to-speech market, which Data Bridge Market Research predicts will grow by 30.2 percent compounded annually through 2029. Evolve Business Intelligence expects the voice recognition market to grow by nearly 15 percent compounded annually through 2033. MarketsandMarkets has projected the AI voice generator market to grow 37.1 percent compounded annually through 2030. Meticulous Research projects the conversational AI market to grow 23.9 percent compounded annually through 2030. And Technavio expects the voice assistant applications market to grow 41 percent compounded annually through 2028.
Those are projections; any number of industry, economic, social, and geopolitical factors could move the needle up or down in an instant. But for now they reflect an industry on a dramatic upswing.
As a result of continued advancements in AI, including natural language processing, generative AI, and neural networking, the ability for systems of all sorts to handle voice on a larger scale has also rapidly risen. Speech interfaces are already common in our cars, on our smartphones, in our smart home appliances, and in our business software applications and search engines.
Another promising trend is that major market players are spending a lot of money on research and development to increase their product lines. They are also taking steps to grow their global footprints, expand their partnerships and integrations, explore mergers and acquisitions, and lower the cost of their technologies.
As voice technology continues to excel, developers and engineers will continue to solve other performance issues related to speech systems, including accuracy, fluency, accents, background noise, and speaker identification. We expect this year’s Speech Industry Award winners to play a role in those efforts, new players to emerge, and big-tech powerhouses to continue their industry dominance. And when they do, they’ll likely earn a spot on our 2025 Speech Industry Award winners list.
Leonard Klie is the editor of Speech Technology magazine. He can be reached at lklie@infotoday.com.