New creator-focused AI technology and key leadership hires to further power the fastest-growing English-speaking manga and webtoon platform

August 14, 2024 06:00 AM Pacific Daylight Time

NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–VoyceMe, the first-of-its-kind manga and webtoon creator platform, today announced new funding, product and technology pipeline details, and the addition of key executive leadership. With over eight million monthly visits and an increase in readership of 1,000% since 2023, VoyceMe has secured new seed investments, bringing total capital to $10MM. Redpoint Ventures led the latest round with participation from existing investors Torch Capital, Red Sea Ventures, and Clara Vista Partners.The funding allows VoyceMe to expand its platform offering and continue to build out its content and proprietary technology.

“VoyceMe’s explosive growth is testament to both the quality of their tech and the depth of demand from millions of readers around the world.”

Manga and webtoons are rapidly emerging as a dominant force in global entertainment. Leveraging ethical AI, VoyceMe empowers creators to monetize their content and foster deeper connections with fans through robust social features. The animanga industry (including anime, manga, and webtoons) is a behemoth, currently valued at over $47 billion. With projected growth to more than double within the next five years, the category is undeniably penetrating mainstream culture. In fact, Netflix’s most-watched show in the second half of 2023, One Piece, is a live action adaptation of a manga. Even professional sports teams and athletes are actively participating in anime culture: the LA Chargers released their NFL schedule as an anime trailer.

“VoyceMe is at an exciting tipping point,” said VoyceMe CEO and Founder Dylan Telano. “Thanks to the confidence from our investment partners, we’re able to fully realize our all-in-one platform experience and content strategy, which looks to turn readers into creators by democratizing manga and webtoons. Through specialized technology we’ve developed, we’re streamlining the creation process, enabling millions of fans to easily create and share their own artwork.”

To drive the company’s aggressive growth, VoyceMe has appointed Dexter Ong as Vice President, Head of Development, and Head of Strategic Initiatives. Ong previously worked at Wattpad, a webnovel publishing platform acquired for $600M in 2021, and WEBTOON, the largest global webcomic platform, which recently filed to go public and generated $1.3B in revenue in 2023 with 170M monthly active users. Additionally, VoyceMe has appointed Rob Pereyda, as their fractional Head of Anime. Pereyda is the former Head of Anime at Netflix and Vice President of Business Development at Viz Media, the largest manga publisher in North America.

VoyceMe’s centralized platform introduces a new kind of ecosystem for manga lovers around the world. The comprehensive and intuitive experience allows users to seamlessly find and consume manga, stream anime, connect with an engaged community of authors and artists they love, purchase merchandise, and even become a creator themselves. Currently in beta and set to reach general availability in 2025, VoyceMe’s story-driven technology powered by ethical AI will create more publishing opportunities for first-time creators, experienced artists, and IP looking to enter the anime world. Any user will be able to quickly and easily develop and distribute their own manga and webtoon. In addition, VoyceMe’s technology is all built from creators with creators in mind. VoyceMe’s story-driven technology helps reduce creator burnout, fight against image scraping, and increase content revenue opportunities.

“We’re excited to help usher in this next chapter of growth for VoyceMe as it looks to own one of the fastest growing categories of entertainment, globally,” said Meera Clark of Redpoint Ventures. “As we envision a future where AI transforms every corner of entertainment, we believe that VoyceMe is uniquely positioned to own the market for manga and anime with its proprietary library of training data, responsible generative tooling platform, and engaged user base that together create a compelling flywheel for both creators and fans alike.”

VoyceMe is the largest studio creating English-original manga and webtoons within North America. It is also building one of the largest original anime IP libraries globally due to its capabilities and strategic partnerships, launching hundreds of series every month. “Dylan and his team consistently produce outstanding originals, while VoyceMe’s platform champions creators and continues to propel this cultural wave forward,” said Scott Birnbaum of Red Sea Ventures. VoyceMe has also recently entered into a strategic partnership with Heavy Metal Comics and has acquired the rights to the new prequel for the Night of the Living Dead for manga plus anime, multiple top Japanese and South Korean manga/webtoon platforms for content licensing, and has partnered with Zokio to scale VoyceMe’s democratization vision.

“We have never seen a platform scale content and engage a fanatical fanbase as well as VoyceMe has,” said Chris Harper of Torch Capital. “VoyceMe’s explosive growth is testament to both the quality of their tech and the depth of demand from millions of readers around the world.”

For more information on VoyceMe, please visit https://www.voyce.me/ and access the EPK HERE.

About VoyceMe

VoyceMe is a first-of-its-kind platform that centralizes the manga and anime fandom experience, drawing two million monthly active users. It allows fans to read manga, interact directly with artists and authors, watch and purchase anime, buy merchandise, and even create their own series from one single location, creating the ultimate experience for weebs. For creators, VoyceMe democratizes manga creation with a proprietary ethical GenAI tool, trained on VoyceMe’s own dataset, designed to help professional artists reduce burnout and enable anyone to create manga. For users, VoyceMe is an endless hub of content. VoyceMe is the largest North American studio producing English original manga and webtoons, generating content five times faster and seven and a half times more cost-efficiently than any other studio. Investors include Redpoint Ventures, Red Sea Ventures, Torch Capital, Clara Vista, M13, Bessemer Venture Partners, and RiverPark Ventures. The platform also boasts support from entertainment leaders like former Marvel Studios CFO Matt Finick, former Rotten Tomatoes CEO and founder Patrick Lee, and former NBC Universal Television Chairman Jeff Gaspin. For more information on VoyceMe, please visit https://www.voyce.me/.

Contacts

Press:
Carlee Snyder
carlee.snyder@avenuez.com

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