PerSay was an Israeli start-up company specializing in
Voice Biometrics
Speaker recognition is the identification of a person from characteristics of voices. It is used to answer the question "Who is speaking?" The term voice recognition can refer to ''speaker recognition'' or speech recognition. Speaker verification ...
technology. Founded in 2000, its voice biometrics systems are used in the banking, insurance, governments, and telecommunications industries worldwide.
History
PerSay was founded in February 2000 as a spin-off of
Verint Systems
Verint Systems is a Melville, New York-based analytics company which was founded in 2002. The company sells software and hardware products for customer engagement management and business intelligence. Their products are designed to assist clie ...
(NASDAQ: VRNT), part of the
Comverse Technology
Comverse Technology, Inc., often referred to as simply Comverse, was a technology company located in Woodbury, New York in the United States, that developed and marketed telecommunications software. The company focused on providing value-added ...
(Pinksheets: CMVT) group. Its headquarters is in
Ra'anana
Ra'anana ( he, רַעֲנָנָּה, lit. "Fresh") is a city in the southern Sharon Plain of the Central District of Israel. It was founded in 1922 as an American-Jewish settlement, 1 km south of the village of Tabsur, where an important ...
, with an office in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
. Its main investor was SKFT, which handled the
venture capital
Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to start-up company, startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth poten ...
activity of the Shrem Fudim Kelner group.
In April 2004 the company was valued at $2.9 to $3.7 million. In 2010 the company was sold for an undisclosed amount (estimated at 10M-20M USD) to
Nuance Communications
Nuance Communications, Inc. is an American multinational computer software technology corporation, headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts, that markets speech recognition and artificial intelligence software.
Nuance merged with its compe ...
.
Products
PerSay markets the following products:
*VocalPassword, a biometric speaker identification system which verifies the speaker during an interaction using a voice application
*FreeSpeech, a text-independent biometric speaker identification system which verifies a person's identity in the course of natural conversation
*S.P.I.D., an audio-processing system which searches for a target’s voice in a volume of intercepted calls
PerSay's VocalPassword speaker identification technology has been acquired by
Bank Leumi,
China Merchants Bank
China Merchants Bank (CMB) () is a Chinese bank headquartered in Futian District, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China. Founded in 1987, it is the first share-holding commercial bank wholly owned by corporate legal entities in China.
CMB has over five hun ...
,
,
Israel Discount Bank
Israel Discount Bank, Ltd. is a retail bank, commercial bank, private bank and financial services company headquartered in Tel Aviv with 112 branches throughout Israel.
Discount Bank is a public company traded on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange und ...
, and
Caja Madrid
Caja Madrid, formally the Caja de Ahorros y Monte de Piedad de Madrid, headquartered in Madrid,Inicio
." C ...
;
,
Bell Canada,
Vodafone
Vodafone Group plc () is a British multinational telecommunications company. Its registered office and global headquarters are in Newbury, Berkshire, England. It predominantly operates services in Asia, Africa, Europe, and Oceania.
, Vod ...
, and Global Bilgi/Turkcell;
Sandata, Planet Payment of New York, Huawei,
and Barclays Capital and Morgan Stanley.
References
{{reflist
External links
Home page"Emerging Tech Talk #45 - Voice Biometrics - Ariel Freidenberg of PerSay"
on Blip.tv
Software companies of Israel
Speaker recognition
Software companies established in 2000