Inside Moody Pines’ bet on controlled AI voices

The startup Moody Pines has raised funding from U.S. venture capital funds as well as Poland’s S20. The company is developing voice AI technology based on collaboration with artists and a model in which creators retain control over how their voices are used.

The voice AI market is entering its next stage of development. Alongside the race to achieve increasingly natural speech synthesis, issues of voice rights, the provenance of training data, and the principles governing cooperation with creators are becoming increasingly important.

Moody Pines, a startup founded by Monika Podsiadło, is addressing these challenges by developing voice AI technology built on direct collaboration with artists and transparent voice licensing. The company has secured funding from U.S. venture capital funds SignalFire and Race Capital, as well as from the Polish fund S20, co-founded by Bartłomiej Gola.

Voice AI with a different starting point

Moody Pines is developing speech synthesis technology. However, as the company’s founder emphasizes, it is built on assumptions that differ from those adopted by many firms currently operating in the market.

“This approach stems from my many years of experience in voice AI. I have worked with this technology throughout my entire career – both during my studies and in my professional work. This is therefore not a random choice, but the result of a deliberately adopted strategy,” says Monika Podsiadło.

Moody Pines aims to differentiate itself in the market by tightly linking the generated voice to a specific individual. The startup is moving away from a model in which a synthetic voice operates independently of the person whose vocal characteristics it replicates.

“We want to avoid situations in which an AI-generated voice is not connected to a specific person. Today, the main measure of success for this technology is how faithfully it reproduces the human voice. At the same time, it happens that there is no creator behind such solutions, or that real voices are used commercially without proper consent or compensation. This raises a range of legal, ethical, and business challenges,” says Monika Podsiadło.

The model developed by the company assumes that the creator retains control over how their voice is used. It is the creator who decides on licensing terms, the scope of applications, and the commercial contexts in which their digital representation may be used.

From “sounds like a human” to “a human voice”

Moody Pines is focused on developing specialized voice AI models designed for specific use cases.

“For me, success is not about a voice ‘sounding like a human,’ but about it ‘being the voice of a human’ and fulfilling a defined function,” says Monika Podsiadło.

The company is developing its operations in two parallel areas. The first involves building voice data corpora that can be used by artificial intelligence labs developing AI models. The second concerns the development of its own technological infrastructure and voice AI tools. These solutions are currently in a pre-deployment phase.

Data sourced directly from artists

One of the key elements of Moody Pines’ project is its approach to sourcing training data. The startup states that it does not use publicly available recordings from the internet, such as podcasts or open audio libraries.

“We believe this approach raises ethical concerns,” says Monika Podsiadło.

Instead, the company works directly with creators, including members of actors’ associations. These contributors knowingly provide material used to train models under specific licensing terms.

“This gives creators greater control over how their voices are used and over their participation in the entire process,” she adds.

In the longer term, the startup plans to launch a marketplace-style platform.

“We want to build an ‘Airbnb for voices.’ An artist will be able to manage their profile, accept or reject proposals for voice usage, and independently define licensing terms,” says Monika Podsiadło.

Why did S20 invest in Moody Pines?

For the S20 fund, the investment in Moody Pines fits into its strategy of supporting technology projects at the pre-seed stage.

“We get involved in ventures at a very early stage of development, when the business model and product are still taking shape. In such cases, what matters most to us are the founders’ capabilities and their ability to build a company in a given area,” says Bartłomiej Gola.

As he emphasizes, the investment decision in Moody Pines was driven primarily by Monika Podsiadło’s expertise and the potential of the voice AI market.

“Monika has a strong technical and academic background in voice AI. This is a technologically demanding segment. That is why we needed someone who truly understands the challenges involved and is able to develop such solutions,” Bartłomiej Gola notes.

The voice AI market itself was the second factor

“The voice AI market has significant growth potential. An increasing number of devices are using voice interfaces – machines communicate with users, and users communicate with machines. This trend is evident across sectors including automotive, media, consumer electronics, and digital services. In our view, this is a market where, alongside current leaders such as ElevenLabs, many specialized players can successfully operate,” says Bartłomiej Gola.

He adds that Moody Pines is developing technology intended to stand out through its approach to data sourcing and voice-model development.

“The project’s premise is to create high-quality digital voice clones using a relatively small number of training recordings. The goal is to achieve a more accurate reproduction of emotion and natural speech patterns. At the pre-seed stage, however, these remain technological assumptions. As with any venture at such an early stage of development, there is a risk that not all of them will be delivered as planned,” the investor acknowledges.

Investor's perspective

We invest where startups can scale the fastest

Simpact’s investment strategy is centered on backing founders who are building companies with international growth potential.

We are currently in the final stages of an investment in a Polish team operating primarily in the U.S. market. This is not an isolated case. Simpact’s portfolio includes three foreign companies founded or co-founded by Poles. One of them is Nutrix, a medtech company established by Maria Hahn.

The company operates in Switzerland, which gives it access to a well-developed scientific ecosystem, research grants, and international partnerships. Today, it is raising capital from investors around the world, including funds from Japan, the United States, and Saudi Arabia.

We have also invested in Verdant Nature, a U.S.-based biotechnology company with its R&D and manufacturing operations in Poland. The company generates most of its sales in the U.S. market. Another example is Prosoma, a company founded by Polish entrepreneurs that operates across Western Europe and the United States.

Our experience shows that startups built from day one with a global market in mind often scale more quickly. Founders operating in an international environment find it easier to build relationships with investors, business partners, and customers. From a fund’s perspective, this translates into greater value-creation potential and, ultimately, a higher likelihood of achieving attractive investment returns.

Markets such as the United States and Western Europe also offer easier access to large investors in later funding rounds, as well as to potential acquirers at the exit stage. This is one of the reasons why we are keen entrepreneurs. On the one hand, these founders have a deep understanding of the local ecosystems in which they operate. On the other, they often maintain strong ties to Poland by locating technology teams and research-and-development capabilities here.

Krzysztof Grochowski

manager of the Simpact Fund

Global ambitions and scaling up

From the outset, Moody Pines has been building its business with international markets in mind.

“Since January 2026, we have onboarded several dozen voices and are steadily expanding our catalog. At present, our main constraint is the size of our team. We operate in Los Angeles and New York, while simultaneously launching projects in Warsaw. We plan to establish our technology hub in the Polish capital,” says Monika Podsiadło.

The international nature of the venture was also one of the factors considered by investors. As representatives of the S20 fund emphasize, the voice AI market is developing on a global scale. The ability to build relationships and secure partners beyond Poland is therefore an important driver of the company’s future growth.

The fund looks for companies with a global footprint

S20’s portfolio currently comprises 17 companies. Roughly half are ventures founded by international entrepreneurs or businesses built outside Poland by Polish founders.

“In our view, companies designed from the outset for international markets have greater opportunities to scale, easier access to follow-on funding rounds, and stronger growth potential. We want them, at later stages of development, to attract investors from the United States and Western Europe who can contribute not only capital, but also operational expertise, business networks, and support for international expansion,” says Bartłomiej Gola.

As he points out, the fund’s success depends on the ability of its portfolio companies to build businesses with global reach.

“It is difficult to generate above-average returns by investing exclusively in companies focused on local markets,” concludes the S20 representative.

Key Takeaways

1. Voice AI is shifting from a technology race to a debate over ownership and voice rights. The voice AI market is no longer defined solely by competition over who can build the most natural-sounding speech synthesis. Legal and ethical questions are gaining importance: who owns a voice, and under what terms it may be used. Moody Pines is building a model in which a voice is not an anonymous resource but remains tied to a specific creator who retains control over its use. This fundamentally reshapes the category – from a pure technology contest to a redefinition of the creator–platform relationship.
2. Data and its sourcing are becoming a key competitive advantage in voice AI. At the core of Moody Pines’ model is not only the algorithm, but also the quality and legality of training data. The startup deliberately avoids publicly available recordings, instead relying on direct collaboration with artists. In doing so, it builds controlled, licensed datasets that may offer both qualitative and legal advantages over approaches based on scraping online content. This reflects a broader industry trend: in voice AI, data ownership is becoming as important as model architecture itself.
3. The voice AI market is still early-stage, but investors are already competing for global scale. Both Moody Pines and investors such as S20 assume that the voice AI market is still in formation and has room for multiple specialized players. The key is backing teams with strong technical capabilities and a global-first approach from day one. The fund’s strategy is to support companies with the potential to expand internationally and attract later-stage capital from investors in the United States and Western Europe. This, in turn, may determine their long-term success.