Seed20 May 2024

Signapse secures £2m seed investment and grant led by Soulmates Ventures and Deeptech Seed Fund to advance sign language AI.

Soulmates Ventures and Deeptech Seed Fund co-led the seed round, which includes £500k from Innovate UK.

£2.0MSeed

Signapse develops generative artificial intelligence software to translate English into sign language. The technology aims to improve accessibility for deaf people across transport and digital media.

Signapse has secured £2m in a seed funding round comprising £1.5m from private investors and £500k from Innovate UK. Soulmates Ventures and Deeptech Seed Fund co-led the financing, with additional backing from the Royal Association for Deaf people, Empirical Ventures, CEAS Investments, and The FSE Group. The capital will be deployed to expand into video translation markets and build unconstrained British Sign Language translation capabilities.

Over the past two years, the company has generated daily automated sign language announcements for British rail stations and delivered manual translations for commercial clients. The fresh injection of funds will allow the team to scale its generative artificial intelligence models and broaden accessibility options for deaf communities globally.

From the founder

"I couldn't be more excited and proud about this next stage in our growth. It is a landmark opportunity, a once in a lifetime moment, to build a transformative product."

Sally Chalk

CEO and Co-Founder at Signapse

Investor perspective

"We at Soulmates Ventures are proud and excited to be a part of the Signapse endeavour in building unconstrained generative AI sign language translation. Their innovative solution is reflecting the daily challenges and needs of the Deaf people. We are looking forward to supporting the Signapse team through our acceleration programme to amplify their distinctive real-time solution and enhance accessibility for the Deaf community globally."

Michal Sikyta

Managing Partner, Soulmates Ventures