Andrew Mason's Descript snags $15M, acquires Lyrebird to let users type text to create audio in their own voices – TechCrunch

The boom in popularity for podcasting has given a new voice to the world of spoken word content that had been largely left for dead with the decline of broadcast radio. Now riding the wave of that growth, a startup called Descript that's building tools to make the art of creating podcasts -- or any other content that involves working with audio -- a little easier with audio transcription and editing tools, has a trio of news announcements: funding, an acquisition, and the launch of a new tool that brings some of the magic of natural language processing and AI to the medium by letting people create audio of their own voices based on text that they type. Descript, the latest startup from Groupon founder Andrew Mason, created as a spinoff of his audio-guide business Detour (which got acquired by Bose last year), is today announcing $15 million in funding, a Series A for expanding the business (including hiring more people) that's coming from Andreessen Horowitz (it also funded the startup's seed round in 2017) and Redpoint. Along with that, the company has acquired a small Canadian startup, Lyrebird -- which had, like Descript, also built audio editing tools. Together, the two are rolling out a new feature for Descript called Overdub: people will now be able to create "templates" of their voices that they can in turn use to create audio based on words that they type, part of a bigger production suite that will also let users edit multiple voices on multiple tracks.