Cool Company Raises · $50.0M · Series A · nuancelabs.ai

Nuance Labs raises a $50.0M Series A round

Nuance Labs is a Seattle AI research lab building a full-duplex audiovisual foundation model for human conversation. Instead of chaining transcription, a language model, voice synthesis and animation together, a single unified system perceives and generates speech, facial expression and body language at the same time — so it reads the non-verbal cues in a live conversation and responds in the moment rather than after the turn ends. Founded by former Apple PhD researchers Fangchang Ma (CEO), Edward Zhang (CTO) and Karren Yang (Chief Scientist), with Yaser Sheikh advising. Target uses are sales, customer service, coaching, professional training and education, with a research preview due later in 2026. The $50M Series A was led by returning investor Lightspeed Venture Partners, with Accel and South Park Commons also returning and NVIDIA and Define Ventures joining.