SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--SoundHound Inc.®, the leading innovator in voice-enabled AI and conversational intelligence technologies, today announced a partnership with the Hyundai Motor Group, South Korea’s leading automobile manufacturing group, to embed the SoundHound music application into select Hyundai Motor Group vehicles worldwide. This partnership began in North America in 2014, with the world’s first in-car implementation of SoundHound, the most advanced music search, discovery, and connected streaming experience. The new global expansion will begin in Korea with the new 2018 Hyundai Veloster model, with additional models to follow.
SoundHound Inc. has developed a unique feature set designed specifically for car integration. This integration enables drivers of Hyundai vehicles to identify songs and access SoundHound features directly through the vehicle’s dashboard, without needing their mobile phone. This comes after significant advancements from SoundHound Inc. on its music database, including the integration of KT’s Genie Music catalog to reach a wider audience in Korea, and enabling faster, more accurate music recognition.
This partnership highlights SoundHound Inc.’s position as the leading independent platform that enables music streaming services to reach their fans. It also represents a continuing strategic initiative between SoundHound Inc. and KT to bring new technology to Korea. In 2017, SoundHound Inc. raised a Series D round of funding to support further expansion of its voice-enabled AI platform, Houndify, with both Hyundai and KT participating as strategic investors.
SoundHound Inc. introduced the Houndify platform in 2015, with the mission of bringing voice-enabled AI to everyone. The platform powers more than 50,000 partners and reaches over 300 million end-users globally. Houndify partners include many automotive companies, as well as industry leaders such as Samsung, NVIDIA, Uber, and Yelp, with thousands of distinct products being Houndified. Houndify is the only AI platform that is fully independent and agnostic, which means companies can integrate it into their full line of products and services, including phones, connected cars, smart home products, and more, while retaining their own brands and users.
“We know that music is part of the driving experience and SoundHound is a beloved music search, discovery and play service,” said James Hom, Vice President of Products and co-founder of SoundHound Inc. “It was a natural fit for us to work with Hyundai Motor Group and KT to fully integrate the enhanced SoundHound experience into the automobile and make it as easy as possible for drivers to identify and capture those discoveries. We see even greater potential in the future and plan to continue to make the driving experience more intelligent and productive.”
“Hyundai is very focused on bringing innovation to the driving experience,” said Paul Choo, Director of Vehicle IT Development Center at Hyundai Motor Group. “We believe that consumers will become increasingly savvy with the intelligent technologies available to them in the driving experience. We are on the forefront of bringing these innovations to our customers with our deep partnership with SoundHound Inc., the leader in sound recognition and voice technologies.”
Developers interested in exploring the Houndify platform can visit Houndify.com to learn more and register. To download SoundHound for iOS or Android, visit http://www.soundhound.com.
About SoundHound Inc.:
SoundHound Inc. turns sound into understanding and actionable meaning. We believe in enabling humans to interact with the things around them in the same way we interact with each other: by speaking naturally to mobile phones, cars, TVs, music speakers, and every other part of the emerging ‘connected’ world. Our consumer product, Hound, leverages our Speech-to-Meaning™ and Deep Meaning Understanding™ technologies to create a groundbreaking smartphone experience, and is the first product to build on the Houndify platform. Our SoundHound product applies our technology to music, enabling people to discover, explore, and share the music around them, and even find the name of that song stuck in their heads by singing or humming. Through the Houndify platform, we aim to bring voice-enabled AI to everyone and enable others to build on top of it. We call this Collective AI. Our Mission: Houndify everything.
About Hyundai Motor Group:
The Hyundai Motor Group consists of more than fifty automotive-related subsidiaries and affiliates led by South Korea’s two largest automakers - Hyundai Motor Company and Kia Motors Corporation. In 2013, the two companies together sold 7.56 million vehicles produced at 31 plants in nine countries. As two of the world’s fastest growing automotive brands, Hyundai and Kia are committed to providing top quality products and experiences that go beyond customers’ expectations. Together, Hyundai and Kia serve as the official automotive partner of FIFA – the governing body of the FIFA World Cup™. Further information about Hyundai Motor and its products is available at http://worldwide.hyundai.com and www.hyundaiglobalnews.com.
About KT Corporation:
KT Corp.(Korea Telecom), Korea’s leading telecommunication service provider, offers fixed-line telephone services, including local, domestic long-distance, and international long-distance fixed-line and voice over Internet protocol telephone services, as well as interconnection services. With its GiGA-class wired & wireless network infrastructure and ICT technologies, KT focuses on various convergence services including IoT, Big Data, AI, aiming at a global market. Moreover, KT provides vast set of global and K-Pop music streaming service through its subsidiary Genie Music, one of the leading music streaming service providers in Korea. Now, KT is preparing to deploy the world’s first broad-scale 5G trial network in 2018 during the PyeongChang Winter Olympic Games. Further information about KT Corp and Genie Music is available at http://corp.kt.com/eng/.
