A Cambridge company that turned its voice modulator into a tool to fight online toxicity has raised a $30 million Series A round of venture capital.
The investment round in Modulate Inc. was led by Lakestar with participation from existing investors Everblue Esports, Hyperplane Management and others.
Modulate was founded in 2017 by MIT grads Carter Huffman and Mike Pappas. Huffman was previously a technologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and a software engineer at Dimensional Insight. Pappas was an early employee of travel tech startup Lola, where he had the title of software architect.
Following its launch, Modulate was using machine learning to change someone’s voice as they spoke. Pappas told BostInno in 2018 that the self-funded startup was targeting the gaming industry to give players a tool to customize their digital characters with a “voice skin.”
Moderation tech for video gaming
Modulate is still targeting the gaming industry, but with a twist on its original plans. The company’s new product, ToxMod, uses machine learning to go beyond transcription of voices to understand their tone. The company said this is important in differentiating between friendly trash talk and harmful comments to help remove bad actors from games.
ToxMod can detect offenses with greater than 98% accuracy, the company said, and allow moderation teams to respond to issues more than 25 times faster.
“ToxMod is changing the way game developers attack toxic behavior in their communities, and this funding is a real validation of our mission to make online communities safer,” Pappas said in a statement.
In a blog post, Pappas wrote that the company’s entry into combatting online toxicity began with conversations with leaders at social media platforms. They learned that while voice-based communication helps build camaraderie online, there wasn’t technology to monitor for harmful behavior.
“Several years and millions of dollars in seed money later, we can confidently answer that it’s quite a hard problem indeed,” Pappas wrote. “But at the same time, we’re incredibly proud of our amazing team for having overcome those challenges to build ToxMod, the world’s first moderation platform specifically designed for voice and all it entails.”
Pappas said Modulate has already tested its voice moderation system with Rec Room and expects to announce other partnerships soon. ToxMod only works for English speakers now, but the company plans to expand to other languages.
The company will put its new funding toward expanding its team. Modulate had 15 employees at the start of 2022 and will have 27 by the end of August. They’re hiring software engineers, businesspeople, operations and support staff, Pappas said.
The team at Modulate is also thinking about how its technology could solve bigger issues in the online world.
“How can we protect children before a sexual predator comes after them, rather than recognizing and punishing the perpetrator after the fact?” Pappas wrote. “How can we make sure to respect the diversity of players and give each group the space to define their own norms, while also providing strong guarantees of safety to those who feel they need them?”
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