SpeakEasy Labs Korea, which operates the artificial intelligence (AI)-based English learning solution 'Speak', announced on the 11th that it has attracted a series C investment of about 109.4 billion won ($78 million). The company's valuation reached 1.4 trillion won ($1 billion), marking its successful entry as a unicorn corporation.
Global venture capital firm Accel, known as a major investor in Meta and Slack, led the investment. Existing investors such as the OpenAI Startup Fund, Khosla Ventures, and Y Combinator also participated.
Speak has doubled its corporate valuation to 227.4 billion won ($162 million) within six months of its previous series B3 funding round, accumulating a total of 227.4 billion won ($162 million) in investments. The company noted that both the previous and current investments were proposed first by the investors, making this even more significant.
Ben Quazzo, a partner at Accel and a member of Speak's board, said, 'Speak has shown exceptional growth and potential in the consumer AI sector,' adding, 'It will open a new chapter in personalized language learning through expansion into global markets and the institutional sector.'
Corner Nikolai Zwick, CEO of Speak, noted, 'This year alone, the number of sentences spoken by users through Speak has already surpassed 1 billion,' and said, 'We will continue to provide innovative AI tutoring so that millions of learners can break language barriers and venture into a wider world.'
Speak currently offers services in 12 languages across 40 countries. Recently, it launched 'S4B (Speak for Business)', a corporate English learning solution, expanding its business reach across industries from large corporations to small and medium enterprises (SME).