This is your Captain AI speaking
Turkey’s Pegasus Airlines has launched a multilingual project allowing flights to Spanish, Arabic, and Russian-speaking countries to feature AI-generated announcements in the respective local language, following the English version.
The Pegasus Innovation Lab, which was established last year in Silicon Valley to spearhead new technologies and innovations in the aviation sector, developed the project, which harnesses AI for voice cloning and multi-language announcement systems.
The system clones the voices of male and female Pegasus captains to create dynamic multilingual announcements tailored to each flight.
The announcements share details such as flight information, weather, destination, the captain’s name, and flight duration, all updated via AI before take-off.
Toyota eyes the skies
Joby Aviation has secured a $500 million investment from Toyota Motor Corporation, as part of their ongoing partnership to advance electric air taxi production for commercial use. This investment, divided into two equal parts, brings Toyota’s total commitment to Joby to $894 million. The funds will be used to aid in the certification process and scale up commercial production of Joby’s electric air taxis.
This investment follows significant developments for Joby, including its recent acquisition of Xwing’s autonomy division in June, aimed at enhancing its aerial mobility vision.
Simultaneously, Joby is working towards launching air taxi services in Dubai by 2026, as a way of solidifying its position in the air mobility space.
Podeo rules the air waves
The world’s largest podcast distribution platform, Podeo, has revealed details of a US$5.4M funding round to support podcasters overcome the discoverability challenge.
The Series A funding round was led by Oraseya Capital (the VC arm of Dubai Integrated Economic Zones Authority) with participation from Ibtikar Fund, Cedar Mundi Ventures, Samarium, iSME, and returning investor Razor Capital.
Podeo helps podcasters with content creation, distribution across radio stations, airlines, ride-hailing services, gaming and chat apps, and monetisation.
It has a community of 100,000+ creators and a global audience of more than 50 million listeners.
Podeo says podcasters have seen an average boost of 166% in monthly audience growth after migrating to its platform.
Honing in on hospitality
Natural language processing (NLP) solutions startup Aiello has completed its latest US$5 million funding round. The capital raised will support its international expansion, particularly in Japan and South-east Asia.
In 2023, Aiello launched Aiello-One, an all-in-one software as a service (SaaS) management platform designed specifically for the hospitality industry.
The platform offers three core modules: Interface, Operations, and Insight, simplifying the adoption of digital solutions, while the platform’s plugin system enables continuous upgrades.
The platform helps hotels to reduce maintenance costs and tailor the system to meet unique operational needs.
Beyond expanding AIello’s reach, the company aims to collaborate with local software and service providers to adapt and enhance the Aiello Hospitality Platform, creating a fully localised, all-in-one SaaS solution that can replace outdated systems.
The latest round was led by prominent Japanese venture capital firms Cool Japan Fund and CDIB Cross Border Innovation Fund II LP, along with E Sun Venture Capital Co, Ltd, and B Current Mstar Impact Investment.
