Led by Lakestar, investors include Everblue Management, Hyperplane Ventures, and Galaxy Digital
CAMBRIDGE, MA – AUGUST 16, 2022 – Modulate, a leader in the fight against online toxicity, today announced the completion of a $30 million Series A funding round led by Lakestar with participation from existing investors Everblue Management, Hyperplane Ventures, and others. In addition, Mika Salmi, Managing Partner of Lakestar, will join Modulate’s Board of Directors. The company will use the funds to expand its team and continue scaling its groundbreaking proactive voice moderation platform, ToxMod™.
“ToxMod is changing the way game developers attack toxic behavior in their communities and this funding is a real validation of our mission to make online communities safer,” said Mike Pappas, CEO of Modulate. “We’re thrilled to welcome Mika and his vast store of experience to the Board as we grow our team and ramp up the development and deployment of ToxMod.”
ToxMod uses sophisticated machine learning models to go beyond transcription and understand not just what each player is saying but how they are saying it – including their emotion, volume, prosody, and more. This is crucial, as what’s harmful in one context may be friendly trash talk or genuinely supportive in another. ToxMod uses its nuanced understanding of voice to differentiate between these types of situations, identifying the worst actors while leaving everyone else free to enjoy their own approach to each game. Thanks to this sophistication, ToxMod can detect offenses with greater than 98% accuracy (which further improves over time), and enable moderation teams to respond to incidents over 25 times faster.
“Modulate’s technology to identify toxic behavior is light years ahead of anything else in the market,” said Mika Salmi, Managing Partner at Lakestar. “We at Lakestar are excited to be a part of Modulate’s mission to stop toxicity in games and in other social applications.”
Modulate is a team of world-class audio experts, gamers, allies, and futurists who are eager to build a better online world. For additional perspective on today’s announcement and to learn more about the company, read today’s blog post or visit Modulate.ai.
About Modulate
Modulate’s mission is to build a richer, safer, more inclusive metaverse for everyone. Its product ToxMod is the world’s first voice-native moderation system. Where existing voice moderation tools focus only on the 8% of players that submit reports, ToxMod offers proactive moderation that empowers platform and game moderators to make informed decisions to protect players from harassment, toxic behavior, and even more insidious harms. Modulate has helped customers address thousands of instances of online toxicity, enabling operational efficiencies and revenue growth by creating an environment where players feel safe.
Visit Modulate.ai to learn more, and follow Modulate on LinkedIn and Twitter.
About Lakestar
Lakestar’s mission is to find, fund and grow disruptive businesses – enabled by technology – that are founded by exceptional entrepreneurs in Europe and beyond. Since raising its first fund in 2012, Lakestar manages an aggregated volume of over €1.6bn across three early stage funds and a growth fund.
The team actively advises and supports portfolio companies in marketing, recruitment, technology, product development, and regulatory insight, accompanying founders from seed to early stage to growth stage or exit. Lakestar currently has the privilege of holding investments in Revolut, Blockchain.com, Opendoor, Oscar, GetYourGuide, sennder, Eigen, Public.com, SoFi, Solarisbank, Uncapped, Yapily, Terra Quantum, accuRx, Rhino, ZEBEDEE and Hometogo to name a few. Lakestar has presence in Berlin, Zurich and London.
Visit us on LinkedIn and our website www.lakestar.com.
