There’s nothing like a double espresso and croissant in the morning while catching up with the latest news. Today, I’d like to share some facts and figures from a fascinating article that I came across the other day.
You can find it here.
According to a report, State of the Israeli Ecosystem, published by an Israeli NGO called Start-Up Nation Central, Israel’s AI arena grew from 512 companies to 1,150 between 2014 and 2018 – a rise of almost 125%.
Yet, as impressive as that number is, it wasn’t the only stand-out statistic in the report. There was plenty more to come.
In 2018, 16% of the 6,673 active tech companies in Israel were found in the field of AI. During the same year, these companies also attracted 32% of all funding rounds and received 37% of all capital raised. Between them, Israeli AI companies raised a record-breaking $2.25 billion between them.
Taking the industry as a whole, it’s not just homegrown tech companies that are going full steam ahead. There are now some 320 multinational companies with a presence in Israel, including giants like Google, Microsoft and Intel. Even more notably, in every year during the past decade more than 20 multinationals established R&D facilities in the country, often through acquisitions, amounting to a massive vote of confidence in the local tech scene. These relative newcomers include household names like Apple and Daimler.
Although I’m very pleased to see this data, I must admit that I’m not entirely surprised. I say this because I’ve seen firsthand from my work here at AudioCodes exactly how central AI has become in the tech world over the past few years.
As a global company headquartered in Israel, offering voice networking and media solutions for the digital workplace, AudioCodes has invested a lot of resources into this rapidly expanding and exciting field.
In 2018, we launched our Voice.AI business unit, which we anticipate will become a key AudioCodes growth engine. The Voice.AI business unit is designed to harness and leverage the company’s vast telephony and voice networking infrastructure to extract AI-driven, actionable insights from enterprise voice data, and provide advanced Voice.AI solutions around them.
During the same year, we released an improved, state-of-the-art automated speech recognition AI engine, based on Deep Neural Network architecture, giving our enterprise customer base even higher accuracy rates and exceptional voice recognition performance. This technology is a vital ingredient in the suite of innovative solutions that make up the AudioCodes enterprise-class Voice.AI portfolio:
SmartTAP 360°
A call recording solution for enterprise interactions that is AI-ready for later-stage speech analytics applications.
VocaNOM
An internal communications assistant solution that allows any employee to reach another simply by saying their name.
VocaONE
A voice-driven calling assistant that enables organizations to handle thousands of calls a day while maintaining a superior customer experience.
VocaBOT
An automated voice-driven customer service solution that is available 24/7 with zero waiting time, aimed at automating specific customer service tasks.
VocaSDK
A mobile voice recognition engine specifically designed to enhance smartphone applications with voice activation capabilities with no data exposure to the internet whatsoever.
VocaASR
An enterprise-class voice recognition engine that delivers seamless connectivity to any IVR or contact center platform and powers existing CRMs and contact center platforms with voice recognition capabilities.
As I watch Israeli hi-tech – and the AI sector in particular – go from strength to strength, I have to say that I’m both proud and honored to see that we at AudioCodes are right in the middle of the action. If you want to join the AI revolution and find out more about how our products can make a difference in your enterprise, we’d love to hear from you.
