Voice cloning startup reaches unicorn status 🦄
"99% percent of use cases we are seeing are in the positive realm."
Good morning. Hope you all had a nice weekend. Want to hear a really embarrassing story? Yesterday I got brunch and a pole dancing bloody mary with friend of the letter
(who is getting so much press this week!). I walked into the restaurant and a man asked me if I wanted to sit down, and I said “Oh, no I’m meeting someone else.” And then he asked me again, and I said “I think you have the wrong person.” And then he looked at me like I had 10 heads and I said, “I’m sorry, I don’t know you.” Guys, the man worked there and he was asking if I wanted a table… I don’t know why I thought he was like… waiting for a Tinder date. I cried I was so embarassed lol. I’m only telling this story because I promised Joanna I would, and because all of my friends knew where the story was going after the first sentence.ANYWAY… some news:
The Wall Street Journal says that women are now shopping at traditional sporting stores. This is not just The North Face — Purdey and Orvis are for shooting shotguns on English countryside estates. Now, this is not new. I pulled out my copy of The Official Preppy Handbook to show you that this has been an element of prep dressing since the dawn of duck boots (they even call out Orvis on the Where to Shop page:
And while we have the book out, I need to include my favorite diagram:
Rumble, a failing video and social media platform that has slight right-wing vibes, is partnering with Barstool. This is one of those companies that IPO’d during COVID and really shouldn’t have (here’s their investor presentation lol). Interested in what’s going to come out of this… SIDE NOTE, I really need to talk to Portnoy about something. So if any of you can help me, I’d be forever indebted to you.
Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia invested $80mm in an AI voice-cloning startup. ElevenLabs, a startup that uses artificial intelligence software to replicate voices in more than two dozen languages, has raised a new round of funding that values the two-year-old company north of $1B. Chief Executive Officer Mati Staniszewski previously worked at Palantir (nice) and BlackRock (nice). Sounds like a great guy. Staniszewski said audio clips impersonating people without their consent are prohibited and would be removed. The 40-person startup has five people devoted to moderation and policy work and plans to hire more, he said. “Ninety-nine percent of use cases we are seeing are in the positive realm,” he said. So what’s the use? Translating an essay into an audio book, you can have your voice talk to people when you don’t want to talk, and I’m sure you can do something dark with the 1% negative realm.