A group of investors, led by Mika Salmi of Lakestar, raised $30M in Series A funding for Modulate, a startup that works to eliminate online toxicity. Existing investors include Everblue Esports and Hyperplane Management, among others. Additionally, Salmi will join Modulate’s board of directors.
Fund usage
ToxMod is a revolutionary voice moderation platform. The company will use the raised funds to grow its team and improve the platform.
ToxMod understands what a player is saying, as well as how they are saying it: including emotion, volume, prosody, and more. This is important because what someone says could be considered harmful in one context but friendly trash talk in another.
ToxMod can determine the difference between players who are intentionally being rude and those who arent, using its understanding of voice tones and words. It can detect when players are offending more than 98% of the time (which can improve over time). ToxMod can also help moderation teams respond to violations more quickly than before.
Mika Salmi is a Managing Partner at Lakestar, and is excited to be working with Modulate on their mission to stop toxic behavior in social apps and games. Modulate has developed technology that can identify harmful behavior much better than any other company in the market, says Salmi.
Modulate, founded by Mike Pappas and Carter Huffman in 2017, has a product called ToxMod that helps game and platform moderators protect players from harassment, toxic behavior, and other more serious concerns. The ToxMod product provides semi-automated moderation by giving informed decisions to moderators to help increase growth and efficiency for their customers. Modulate has helped their customers deal with thousands of instances of online toxicity.
Lakestar has invested in many companies, including Blockchain.com, GetYourGuide, Oscar, sennder, Public.com, SoFi, Terra Quantum, Rhino, ZEBEDEE, Hometogo, and many more. The star venture capital firm is located in Berlin, Zurich, and London.
