Deep Zen

DeepZen, a London-based firm founded in 2017, operates at the intersection of artificial intelligence and content creation, specializing in converting text into emotionally resonant audio. The company was established by co-founders Taylan Kamis, who serves as CEO, and Kerem Sozugecer. Kamis' background includes leadership roles at Microsoft and consulting for venture-backed tech companies as a CFO, a journey inspired by a desire to create more lifelike synthetic voices. Sozugecer, the company's Chief Technology Officer, focuses on the end-to-end system, from text analysis to ensuring natural transitions between sentences.

The firm's core business revolves around a proprietary AI-powered platform that produces digital voice solutions for a variety of markets, including audiobook publishing, advertising, corporate marketing, gaming, and e-learning. DeepZen's technology is engineered to analyze and replicate the emotion, intonation, and rhythm of natural human speech, distinguishing it from monotonous, robotic voice assistants. This is achieved by using licensed voice replicas from professional narrators and actors, who are compensated with royalties for the use of their voices. The system identifies emotional cues within a text and uses advanced machine learning algorithms and neural networks to synthesize the audio. An in-house editorial team then refines the AI-generated output for prosodic accuracy.

The business model addresses key inefficiencies in traditional audio production, such as high costs and long production times. By significantly reducing the time to market—from weeks to a matter of hours for a full-length audiobook—and lowering expenses, DeepZen makes audio content creation more accessible, particularly for narrative non-fiction, academic, and business titles. The company offers clients two service options: a fully managed production service and an API for those who wish to manage production themselves. Revenue is generated through this service-based model, with project costs estimated by word count. Clients include publishers, authors, media agencies, and content creators. The company has secured seed and early-stage VC funding, with investors including Oracle and Digital Catapult.

Keywords: AI voice generation, text-to-speech, audiobook production, digital narration, synthetic voices, natural language processing, voice cloning, audio content creation, AI-powered audio, emotive TTS, voice solutions, audio advertising, e-learning narration, gaming voiceover, brand voices, audio localization, speech synthesis, AI narrator, digital publishing, voice technology