ELSA raises $3.2M for its A.I.-powered English pronunciation assistant

ELSA, an app whose name stands for "English Language Speech Assistant" (and not the popular Disney character!), Unlike other courses that focus mainly on teaching grammar and vocabulary, ELSA uses artificial intelligence and speech recognition technology to help language learners with their pronunciation. The $3.2 million pre-A round of funding was led by Monk's Hill Ventures, a firm that invests in post-seed stage startups in Southeast Asia. Monk's Hill founder and partner, Peng T. Ong, is joining ELSA's board. The San Francisco-based startup was originally founded in 2015 by Stanford grad Vu Van, ELSA CEO, and Dr. Xavier Anguera, whose background is in speech recognition and A.I. technologies. It debuted at SXSW in March 2016, where it later won the SXSWedu launch competition.