While working as a research scientist at Google on Google translate, I realised that human machine interaction would soon evolve from keyboard and touch to voice. In 2011, Siri was introduced but voice assistant was very much a novelty and there was nothing like it in China. I wanted to lead this voice first revolution in China, so in 2012 I founded my own company, Mobvoi, combining mobile and voice.
Chumenwenwen not only introduced a standalone voice search app but also a WeChat corporate account so users could do voice searches directly in WeChat. It was the first voice first consumer product and gathered a lot of user interest right away.
The product Chumenwenwen means “go out and ask” in Chinese, which indicates its two salient features: mobile and voice search. Chumenwenwen voice search removes the need for typing into keyboards or physically interacting with your phone. It allows for voice activated commands that can be used to control every aspect of your phone use. It is an application that is available on multiple platforms including WeChat, the most popular mobile messaging app in China.
Our voice-activated AI assistance app, that is available on Android and iOS devices and allows searches in over 60 vertical domains of interest, gives users the ability to ask for directions, restaurant suggestions, news, and weather information among many other options. Overall, it behaves very similarly to Google Assistant or Alexa. In 2015, Chumenwenwen became the official voice service provider for Google’s WearOS users in China.
Over the last seven years, Mobvoi has developed Chinese voice recognition, natural language processing, and vertical search technology in-house and made a line of award-winning voice-enabled consumer products such as TicWatch and TicPods. The company has since undergone six rounds of funding by the likes of Sequoia Capital, Zhenfund, Google, Volkswagen (VW) and SIG.