Evolve IP Scoops Up Speech Analytics Specialist Jog.ai

Cloud services provider Evolve IP is stepping up its speech analytics and AI game.

Evolve IP, based in Wayne, Pa., has acquired Jog.ai, a speech analytics and natural language technology firm. The company will use Jog.ai's technology to give its cloud communications solutions a boost with speech recognition, natural language understanding, voice analysis, and machine learning, said Scott Kinka, Evolve IP's CTO and founding partner.

"We're excited at the prospect of adding these features for our customer base and deepening our platform," Kinka said.

The two companies did not disclose the financial terms of the deal. The buy marks Evolve IP's 15th acquisition.

[Related: Evolve IP Scoops Up U.K. UCaaS Giant Thevoicefactory]

Austin, Texas-based Jog.ai was founded in 2016. The firm's application uses AI to transcribe phone calls and creates a shareable “screenplay” that links audio and text transcription together, and lets users flag important references.

Kinka said the deal will help the company increase its businesses offerings in verticals that require compliance, such as healthcare, finance and legal.

"We record a lot of calls across both our UC and contact center platforms, and our customers were looking for more intelligence," he said. "We really wanted to pursue AI so we could do something with those transcriptions. It basically provides a speaker by speaker, live screenplay of a call."

Jog.ai's overlay technology can work with Evolve's existing call recording solutions, which makes the offering well-suited for contact centers, sales professionals, executives, and other businesses that have compliance requirements or transcription and indexing needs, the company said.

"We know what the tech does, and we have some use cases in our mind, but we're really excited to see what our customers come up with," Kinka said.

Jog.ai's two employees, its co-founders, will join the Evolve IP team, as will Jog.ai's outsourced development arm that will work with Evolve's internal development team.

Evolve IP last April acquired U.K.-based cloud service giant Thevoicefactory. In 2017, the company acquired identity authentication provider Clearlogin. The company's other recent acquisitions include Mtel, a cloud communications firm based in the Netherlands, which Evolve IP bought in August as part of its strategy to extend its international reach. In May 2017, the provider bought Mesa, Ariz.-based Workspace as a Service provider Azzaron.

Kinka called Evolve's M&A pipeline "robust." The company was acquired by Boston-based private equity firm Great Hill Partners in 2016 as it pledged to triple in size. Nearly three years later, Evolve IP is "north of double the size," Kinka said, thanks to both significant organic growth and M&A activity.