GapMinder Fund II leads Early-Seed investment round in Romanian AI startup VoicePatrol
<p>GapMinder Fund II, a Venture Capital fund focused on technology companies created in Romania and Eastern Europe, has invested in VoicePatrol, an Artificial Intelligence-based startup for real-time protection against toxic behaviors in multiplayer game voice chats.</p>
<p>GapMinder was the lead investor in an Early-Seed round, along with Hyperscope Ventures. </p>
<p>The investment will enable VoicePatrol’s technology expansion, including algorithms to detect abusive behavior, the growth of the team, the implementation of new protection features for game developers and players, and commercial development in the US and Europe.</p>
<p>The VoicePatrol product manages interactions in multiplayer environments, solving a key problem in the industry: protecting users from toxic behavior and harassment. Thus, the product increases player retention and revenues for game developers. </p>
<p>VoicePatrol continuously monitors voice conversations, instantly analyzing content and generating real-time alerts for toxic behavior, harassment or abuse. Through the use of Artificial Intelligence, it understands context and classifies incident severity in a centralized dashboard for easy incident management. </p>
<p>Game developers can deploy Voice Patrol quickly and without high deployment costs as it is cross-platform compatible. The system is available in multiple languages and will soon reach 20 languages. The product was launched in the first half of 2024 after a year of research. </p>
<p>VoicePatrol’s co-founders are Matei Trebien (31, CEO and Machine Learning engineer) and Cătălin Cășuneanu (29, CTO and Fullstack engineer).</p>
<p>Trebien is a Romanian entrepreneur from Iași who currently lives in San Francisco. In 2012 he moved to the UK for graduate studies in Immunology and Epidemiology, later working mainly as a machine learning specialist. </p>
<p>Cășuneanu, co-founder and CTO of the company, lives in Arad and manages the technical infrastructure and product scalability. Previously he worked as full-stack lead at BMW. </p>
<p>“The global gaming market has been valued at over USD 200 billion dollars in 2023 and continues to grow, with interactions being an important feature in popular multiplayer games. Gaming companies are in a constant search for solutions to increase player retention and revenue amid aggressive behavior. At the same time, 50% of parents fear exposing their children to such content. There is a growing demand for protection tools, and voice is becoming essential to keep users safe as online communities expand, become more interactive and regulatory pressure increases. Voice Patrol responds very well to this need, reducing toxic behaviors by 55% in the first two weeks of deployment, and then decreasing the number by 5% each week,” explained Matei Trebien, co-founder and CEO of VoicePatrol. </p>
<p>The first to invest in the company was Ruxandra Muys-Stoian, a Romanian woman relocated to the US, who is the co-founder of the WIT Angels Club, a Silicon Valley club for women investing in tech startups. She has been both financially and operationally involved in the development of VoicePatrol. </p>
<p><em><a href="mailto:radu@romania-insider.com">radu@romania-insider.com</a></em></p>
<p><em>(Photo source: GapMinder)</em></p>