Company:EzDubs
| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Speech translation |
| Fate | Acquired by Cisco |
| Founded | 2023 |
| Founders | Padmanabhan Krishnamurthy Amrutavarsh Kinagi Kareem Nassar |
| Defunct | November 2025 |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California , United States |
| Products | Real-time speech translation apps and bots |
Number of employees | 6 (2025) |
EzDubs was an American speech translation company whose software translated live speech while keeping the speaker's own voice. Founded in 2023 and based in San Francisco, it went through Y Combinator's Winter 2023 batch and raised a US$4.2 million seed round.[1][2][3] Cisco bought the company in November 2025 and closed its consumer apps.[4]
History
Padmanabhan "Paddy" Krishnamurthy and Amrutavarsh Kinagi met at university in Hong Kong, where they built a tool that read lips and turned speech into text for deaf users. They moved to Columbia University in 2021 to work on video dubbing. Kareem Nassar joined as co-founder and chief technology officer; he had founded the speech startup Voicea, which Cisco bought in 2019, and went on to run Cisco's Speech AI group.[1][5]
EzDubs launched an X bot that dubbed video clips in January 2023, a WhatsApp bot for voice messages that July, and iOS and Android apps in early 2024.[1] As of December 2024, its X bot, which dubbed video clips on request, had more than 340,000 followers and drew over a million views a day.[1]
In December 2024 the company took its call app out of beta and raised US$4.2 million in seed funding led by Venture Highway, the fund of Rahul Garg and former WhatsApp executive Neeraj Arora. Angel investors included Y Combinator partner Jared Friedman, Replit chief executive Amjad Masad and president Michele Catasta, Applied Intuition chief executive Qasar Younis, and Replicate chief executive Ben Firshman.[1][5][6]
Technology and products
EzDubs ran two models at once. One cloned the speaker's voice and kept their emotional tone. The other started translating before a sentence ended and handled interruptions, so neither speaker had to wait for the other to finish. EzDubs supported 20 source languages and 34 target languages and could follow a conversation that switched between them.[1][5]
The apps translated voice calls, text and voice messages. EzDubs also ran the X and WhatsApp bots and built plugins for Zoom, Slack, Discord, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet. It sold to consumers rather than businesses, aiming at cross-cultural dating and people working abroad. TechCrunch reported that some users made hundreds of calls a day, averaging 17 minutes each.[1][5]
Acquisition by Cisco
Cisco announced the acquisition on 17 November 2025 and did not disclose the price.[7][8][4] The team joined Cisco Collaboration, where senior vice president Snorre Kjesbu said they would work "side-by-side with our product, engineering, and go-to-market teams".[4][2] Cisco said it would put the translation into Webex calling, messaging and meetings and into its collaboration hardware, and that partners and developers might get access later.[4][2] The consumer apps were due to close on 15 December 2025.[4]
Slator called the deal a fix for a "critical gap" in Cisco's collaboration lineup.[9] It followed TransPerfect's purchase of Unbabel in July 2025 and Palabra AI's purchase of Talo.[2]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 Singh, Manish (11 December 2024). "YC-backed EzDubs is chasing consumer market for translation". TechCrunch. https://techcrunch.com/2024/12/11/yc-backed-ezdubs-is-chasing-consumer-market-for-trasnaltion/.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 "Cisco snaps up real-time translation startup EzDubs as enterprise AI race intensifies". 24 November 2025. https://www.uctoday.com/unified-communications/cisco-snaps-up-real-time-translation-startup-ezdubs-as-enterprise-ai-race-intensifies/.
- ↑ "EzDubs: Real-time speech translation". https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/ezdubs.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 "Cisco acquires translation startup EzDubs". TechCrunch. 17 November 2025. https://techcrunch.com/2025/11/17/cisco-acquires-translation-startup-ezdubs/.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 "EzDubs, Startup Offering Speech Translation for Calls, Raises USD 4.2M in Seed Round". 16 December 2024. https://slator.com/ezdubs-startup-offering-speech-translation-for-calls-raises-usd-4m-seed-round/.
- ↑ "EzDubs raises $4.2M in seed funding". 11 December 2024. https://www.finsmes.com/2024/12/ezdubs-raises-4-2m-in-seed-funding.html.
- ↑ "A new era of AI-powered collaboration: welcoming EzDubs to Cisco". Cisco. 14 November 2025. https://blog.webex.com/collaboration/a-new-era-of-ai-powered-collaboration-welcoming-ezdubs-to-cisco/.
- ↑ "Cisco completes EzDubs acquisition". 25 November 2025. https://www.cisco.com/site/us/en/about/corporate-development/acquisitions/ezdubs/index.html.
- ↑ "Cisco Fills 'Critical Gap', Buys Speech Translation LTP EzDubs". 20 November 2025. https://slator.com/cisco-fills-critical-gap-buys-speech-translation-ltp-ezdubs/.
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