Koemei SA

Koemei SA was created in November 2010. Its registered office is in Martigny (IdeArk). A spin-off of the Idiap research institute, the company markets a cloud voice recognition software package, enabling verbal input to be transcribed automatically to text.

Koemei thus develops for commercial use the work carried out under a European research programme on voice recognition in the context of multi-participant meetings. After more than 8 years’ work and an investment of almost EUR 20 million, the Idiap, together with the UK universities of Sheffield and Edinburgh, granted Koemei a licence to market the results of their research.

Thanks to Koemei’s technology, it is now possible to transcribe audio recordings to text in perfectly acceptable quality, without restricting speakers to using a specific vocabulary. The overall performance of a voice recognition engine is often measured by the error rate of the transcribed words. The error rate of the solutions on the market is around 50%. The most recent projects undertaken with the recognition engine used by Koemei have given an average error rate of less than 20% with normal speech and several speakers, and over 90% accuracy with speech adapted for voice recognition. These rates enable the transcription results to be used efficiently as they are comprehensible and require the minimum human processing input.

This opens the way to the automatic transcription of conversations at meetings, conferences and university courses, with audio recordings being automatically converted to text files in which it is possible to find specific sequences using Google-type searches. Moreover, in conjunction with speaker recognition technology, the voice recognition implemented by Koemei enables not only the transcription of what is said in a conversation, but also the identification of who said what.

Based on this technology, Koemei has perfected a “cloud” version publicly available on www.koemei.com. In addition to its cloud service, Koemei now also offers its clients a “speech-to-text” transcription solution in the form of an API in line with the SaaS (“software as a service”) model. The objective is for companies, IT service providers and application developers to integrate the Koemei solution into their products.

Support of The Ark Foundation

Koemei joined The Ark Incubator in 2010, on the IdeArk site at Martigny. Here, it benefits from support services for start-up companies (premises, coaching, etc.)