SFC Capital leads round into industry-first “Conversational Intelligence” that automates multi-voice professional transcriptions, protects against data breaches and reduces trainee attrition rates

London, 3rd March 2022: Alchemy Machines is using cutting-edge Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) to informatively transcribe, analyse, and summarise legal-specific web meetings and phonecalls. The AI startup has raised $400,000 in pre-seed funding, in a round led by SFC Capital, the UK’s most active seed-stage investor. The funding – that includes Innovate UK grant funding – will support further development of the platform and growth of the team. 

Alchemy Machines’ software produces transcriptions that capture not only the words spoken but also the emotion and sentiment behind them. Founder and CEO, Dia Thanki and her team, developed the platform with the aim of reducing transcription costs for law firms and freeing up increasingly overburdened trainee lawyers and secretarial staff, to focus on high-value work: “High attrition rates in professional services mean that new generations of lawyers and accountants don’t want to spend their time on menial administrative tasks. This has a knock-on effect on support staff and in legal firms specifically, secretaries are working for an increasing number of lawyers, with the ratio expected to be 20 legal professionals per secretary by 2027. Our platform delivers richer, more insightful transcriptions and analytics for remote collaboration” she said. 

Tailored to the requirements of UK GDPR laws, Alchemy Machines’ platform also enhances users’ data protection and privacy, providing protection from the risk of negligence claims if notes are misplaced by storing all information securely. It also offers the ability to anonymise the voices of meeting participants. The software can be integrated with web conferencing platforms and users simply need to press record to activate the transcription recording feature. By the end of the meeting, the audio file and corresponding transcript will be securely available on Alchemy Machines’ platform.  

Dia Thanki adds: “I was involved in a car accident and due to the injuries, I was looking for an app that could transcribe legal-specific calls with my personal injury lawyer. At the time, I did not find any app with high accuracy, therefore I decided to research how to build it – two years later, we developed a MVP that has evolved into much more than a speech-to-text app. Transcription technology has become increasingly popular and sophisticated in recent years thanks to sizable leaps in Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning. Unfortunately, some industries could not benefit due to strict regulations. We aim to fill this gap to help highly regulated firms – starting with legal and then accounting & insurance –  improve efficiency and reduce costs by providing a solution built specifically to meet the organisational and regulatory needs of these sectors. We are thrilled to work with SFC Capital in our growth journey.” 

Ed Stevenson, Investment Manager at SFC Capital, added: “Innovating in highly regulated, high-stakes industries is difficult even for well-established companies. The fact that Alchemy Machines’ technology is already being confidently used by law firms, is a sign that it is filling a much needed gap in this industry. It also speaks highly of Dia’s vision and potential as an entrepreneur. Alchemy Machines has the capability to expand into other industries in need of the efficiency boost that its highly compliant next generation transcription software can provide. We are excited to be supporting Alchemy Machines at this critical stage and look forward to seeing it go from strength to strength as it scales.”

Alchemy Machines’ has also secured various international trade missions and is alumni of the award winning AI accelerator, Machine Intelligence Garage.