Vocal Image hits $12M ARR, raises $3.6M seed led by Educapital
Estonia-based voice coaching startup Vocal Image just closed a $3.6 million seed round led by French edtech VC Educapital. The funding boost comes as the app hits $12 million in annual recurring revenue and grows its paid user count to 50,000.
The startup uses AI coaching to help users improve voice and communication skills. It offers tongue twisters, breathing exercises, and gesture tips, with an AI engine giving automated feedback. Vocal Image’s library targets professionals, leaders, public speakers, and self-confidence seekers. The app is GDPR-compliant and pools a massive AI dataset from 35,000 daily voice recordings, labeled by the user community. 
CEO Nick Lakhoika, a Belarusian exile who struggled with speaking anxiety and only learned English after moving to Estonia, co-founded Vocal Image with vocal coach Maryna “Rusia” Shukiurava and CTO Mikalai Karaliou. They launched the app after a YouTube channel that shared voice training tips.
“You can make strange movements, strange sounds […] and feel safe,” Lakhoika said.
The team joined Tallinn accelerator Startup Wise Guys early on and hit fast growth with less than $1M pre-seed funding, now backed by Specialist VC (Estonia) and Generations Fund (Germany) alongside Educapital.
Vocal Image covers English, Spanish, German, French, Ukrainian, and Russian but plans more localizations to expand globally. With 20 employees, mostly Belarusian exiles, the startup rides recent wins, including being named a top five winner in the European AI Startup Program by Hugging Face, Meta, and Scaleway.
Vocal Image faces stiff competition, with edtech company Headway recently adding an AI speech trainer to its social skills app Skillsta. But Vocal Image’s unique, community-labeled voice data could give it the edge to improve AI accuracy and even develop synthetic voices beyond its core B2C offering.
Expect the startup to use this new capital primarily to scale engineering and expand into new markets.
