An Open-Source (and Cute) Alternative to Amazon Echo
May 29, 2017
Mycroft’s voice-enabled assistant is embodied in the startup’s friendly-looking Mark 1 gadget, but you can build it into all kinds of devices.
Mycroft AI
The Open Voice Assistant
Small OPO
Kansas City, MO
Technology
Accepting International Investment
Voice is the Future
Voice is coming to every device, every user and every household globally. Why? Because it is intuitive, simple and powerful. The voice market is growing exponentially. Smart speakers have already eclipsed smartphones as the fastest growing technology product ever.
Companies want voice technology, but fear Big Tech
This growth has caused problems for companies that don’t have a voice solution. The companies that do have voice technology: Amazon, Google and Apple are competing head to head in nearly every major industrial vertical. Ten years ago Amazon sold books, now they sell cloud computing and space launch services. Google is building cars.
Companies without a voice strategy have seen how Big Tech disrupts markets. They’ve learned from watching Apple eat the music industry and Amazon consume publishing. Smart companies do not want to send customer data to Silicon Valley anymore.
Consumers Want Privacy
Consumers are also waking to the importance of privacy. People have grown uncomfortable with pervasive surveillance from mobile phones, computers, and now, smart speakers. They want a to have a great experience without sacrificing privacy.
Meet Mycroft
Mycroft is the solution for both industry and individuals. Our community is building the open source alternative to proprietary voice technologies like Alexa, Siri and Assistant. Mycroft inhabits the open source segment of this huge emerging market.
Our Vision: A voice assistant that runs anywhere and interacts exactly like a person
We started with a wireless speaker with a high quality microphone. This speaker is a reference device designed to give our developer community a foundation from which to innovate. We made it easy for people to get involved by releasing software for the Raspberry Pi and Linux. The company sold more than 2,000 Mark I reference devices. Then this year Mycroft took more than $450,000 in pre-orders for the Mark II.
Mycroft is a software company
Don’t mistake Mycroft AI Inc. for a device maker. Mycroft is a software platform that allows developers to add a voice assistant to anything.
Mycroft has raised more than $2,500,000 from institutional investors.
Mycroft has raised institutional funding from investors around the world. Through Kickstarter, Indiegogo and recurring payments the Mycroft community has been enormously supportive, but so far our equity offerings have been restricted to accredited investors. Through StartEngine we are changing that, we want to give our community the opportunity to own a piece of the technology company they are helping to build.
Mycroft has real recurring revenue
For corporate customers Mycroft provides an enterprise server license for $1,500/month. We work with companies directly or through third party resellers. Mycroft helps brands deploy custom assistants.
Individual consumers support Mycroft through a $2/month premium membership fee.
The Offering
$1.57/share of Non-Voting Common Stock.
We are offering $1,070,000 in common stock at a $19.9M pre-money valuation. Investors and supporters who participate will be on equal footing with company employees who own the same class of stock.
For members of the Mycroft community who believe in the future of voice and the power of open source this is an excellent opportunity to invest in a high risk, potentially high reward early stage technology company.
Mycroft AI Inc has recently created a new R&D wholly-owned subsidiary, called Brass Cannon LLC. The purpose of this company is to separate the development of the open sourced Mykrosystem from Mycroft's central business. Mycroft AI Inc's role in Brass Cannon is limited to the company Manager being Joshua Montgomery, and if a project is identified to work on, Mycroft AI can be contracted for some or none of the work. This is an experiment in new technologies to see if privacy and user agency can be straightened with distributed ledgers. Currently, no development of this technology is underway.
In the Press
Meet Mycroft, the open source AI who wants to rival Siri, Cortana, and Alexa
June 10, 2016
Could it be that when it comes to AI, Holmes is where the smart is?
Can Mycroft’s Privacy-Centric Voice Assistant Take On Alexa And Google?
January 1, 2018
The Mycroft Mark II is an open-source Amazon Echo clone that doesn’t store any voice data–for better and for worse.
Meet Mycroft, The Open Source Alternative To Amazon Echo
August 20, 2015
Mycroft, an open source artificial intelligence startup opened its Kickstarter campaign last week. It is getting ready to take on the heavyweights such as Amazon Echo, Apple Siri, Google Now, and Microsoft Cortana.
The privacy-first smart speaker taking on the likes of Apple and Amazon
February 1, 2018
Big tech has a problem: the better the technology's functionality, the worse the state of user privacy.
5 Growing Artificial Intelligence Startups You Need to Know About
July 25, 2017
Enter Kansas City's Mycroft, the world's first open-source AI voice assistant. Mycroft is free to download and use, and developers are invited to alter its code to expand and improve its functionality.
Mycroft Mark II: the open source Amazon Echo you’ve always wanted
January 29, 2018
Smart speakers are all the range in tech these days and soon it will be the battle of the titans. But as those giants scuffle, the small men, the consumers, sometimes get trampled on. Especially their privacy. It’s no secrets that the likes of Amazon and Google want your data.
Customize An Open-Source HAL For Your Home
January 1, 2016
Engineers Ryan Sipes and Joshua Montgomery wanted their makerspace in Lawrence, Kansas, to be more intuitive. So they borrowed an artificial intelligence system from other makers and used it to do simple tasks, such as controlling the lights or playing music.
Mycroft Open Source Voice Assistant
September 28, 2017
Mycroft is building an open source voice assistant that can be used by an individual or a corporation.
2015's most exciting Linux devices
December 23, 2015
Being an open hardware platform, there are immense possibilities with Mycroft. Third-party developers can connect it to online services like Facebook and update their Facebook status by talking to Mycroft.
How to build your own Amazon Echo.
April 28, 2017
Turning a Raspberry Pi into a voice-controlled gadget just got a whole lot easier
SMART HOME Meet Mycroft, an open-source smart-home AI platform
August 17, 2015
Seeking funding on Kickstarter, the Mycroft Smart Home AI Platform is voice-activated, cloud-connected, control device with Arduino and Raspberry Pi 2 at its core.
This Open-Source AI Voice Assistant Is Challenging Siri and Alexa for Market Superiority
May 15, 2017
When you issue a command to a virtual assistant like Siri, Alexa, or Cortana, natural language processing technology (NLP) allows the program to interpret your speech and respond in everyday language. As an alternative to these market leaders, Montgomery and his team created Mycroft.
Mycroft Announces a Kickstarter Campaign for the Mark II AI Assistant
January 23, 2018
Mycroft AI is a home voice assistant similar Google Home and Amazon Alexa. But, unlike those, Mycroft is completely open source. You can purchase a ready-to-use device, or just install the software on something like a Raspberry Pi.
This Home Voice Assistant Will Not Sell Your Data
February 15, 2018
A competitor for Amazon Alexa and Google Home, Mycroft's new voice-enabled device is open source and does not collect data without permission.
Mycroft Is an AI for Your Home Powered by Raspberry Pi 2 and Ubuntu Snappy
August 14, 2015
Mycroft is what you would describe as a house computer, a device connected to your house, which acts like a virtual artificial intelligence. In this case, it's a clever mini PC named Mycroft, which is based on Raspberry Pi 2 and runs Ubuntu Snappy Core.
Customize your personal assistant
October 27, 2017
Mycroft, with his large blue LED eyes, is reminiscent of a 1980s alarm clock. The intelligent vocal assistant Mark 1 stands out from competitors who have chosen a minimalist look (Echo, Home or Tianmao Jingling X1) launched by the digital giants Amazon, Google and Alibaba.
The Top 25 500 Startups Batch 20 Demo Day Startups
May 11, 2017
Today is the 500 Startups Batch 20 Demo Day in San Francisco, CA. The startups will pitch to an audience of Venture Capitalists, Angel Investors, and decision makers at large tech companies, in hopes of closing their first (or next) round of funding.
Mycroft Mark II offers something its digital assistant competitors can't: Privacy and openness
February 14, 2018
Quite some time ago, the Mycroft personal assistant was released. Unfortunately, that initial released failed to gain much traction. To many in the open source world that was a surprise, considering it was possible to install Mycroft on a desktop without having to buy the hardware.
Mycroft Mark 2 – Meet The Open Source AI Voice Assistant
January 26, 2018
Mycroft is a project that, until now, required some computer know-how to get going. What might be easy for a technology hobbyist or professional could be an intimidating experience for the average user. Because of this, there has been glaring void in the landscape of personal assistant software.
Mycroft Mark II Smart Display Puts Privacy First
January 25, 2018
Mycroft is about to release its first smart display with a voice assistant called the Mark II. Amazon Echo Show helped get this product segment started in June and several Google Assistant partners announced smart speakers with displays (i.e. smart displays) at CES earlier this month.
Finally, an A.I. voice assistant that doesn’t collect and monetize your data
February 8, 2018
Mike (an abbreviation of Mycroft, the name of Sherlock Holmes’ brother) is a fun-loving supercomputer from Robert Heinlein’s classic sci-fi novel, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. A character as far removed from the cold, austere as HAL as is possible, Mike becomes the best friend of the narrator.
Alexa Is Listening. Here's How to Keep Your Voice Assistant From Recording You.
May 30, 2018
There is an off switch; you just have to be able to find it.
Offering Summary
Maximum 681,528* shares of Non-Voting Common Stock ($1,069,998.96)
*Maximum subject to adjustment for bonus shares. See 10% Bonus below
Minimum 6,370 shares of Non-Voting Common Stock ($10,000.90)
Company | Mycroft AI Inc. |
| | |
Corporate Address | 300 E 39th Street Kansas City, MO 64111 |
| | |
Description of Business | Mycroft AI provides an open alternative to Apple’s Siri and Amazon Alexa. Voice is poised to be the next shift in human-machine interaction and Mycroft is positioned to be the voice platform of choice globally. Incumbent competitors like Apple, Google, and Amazon seem indestructible but historically, open alternatives become industry standards over closed ecosystems. This can be seen in embedded computing and servers (Linux), relational databases (MySQL), web content management (WordPress) and mobile operating systems (Android). Being the open alternative, Mycroft is available to both individual innovators who need a platform on which to build, and large enterprises that care about data privacy and vendor lock. |
| | |
Type of Security Offered | Non-Voting Common Stock |
| | |
Purchase Price of Security Offered | $1.57 |
| | |
Minimum Investment Amount (per investor) | $251.20 |
The 10% Bonus for StartEngine Shareholders
Mycroft AI Inc. will offer 10% additional bonus shares for all investments that are committed by StartEngine Crowdfunding Inc. shareholders (with ≥ $1,000 invested in the StartEngine Reg A+ campaign) within 24 hours of this offering going live.
StartEngine shareholders who have invested $1,000+ in the StartEngine Reg A+ campaign will receive a 10% bonus on this offering within a 24-hour window of their campaign launch date. This means you will receive a bonus for any shares you purchase. For example, if you buy 100 shares of Non-Voting Common Stock at $1.57 / share, you will receive 10 Non-Voting Common Stock bonus shares, meaning you'll own 110 shares for $1.57. Fractional shares will not be distributed and share bonuses will be determined by rounding down to the nearest whole share.
This 10% Bonus is only valid for one year from the time StartEngine Crowdfunding Inc. investors receive their countersigned StartEngine Crowdfunding Inc. subscription agreement.
Irregular Use of Proceeds
Mycroft does not anticipate any irregular use of proceeds.
Show More
Most recent fiscal year-end:
Prior fiscal year-end:
Total Assets
$1,569,741.93
USD
$631,551.97
USD
Cash And Cash Equivalents
$129,643.32
USD
$8,135.33
USD
Accounts Receivable
$43,601.15
USD
$0.00
USD
Short Term Debt
$232,115.26
USD
$198,665.52
USD
Long Term Debt
$2,058,391.00
USD
$420,817.92
USD
Revenues And Sales
$298,227.77
USD
$68,822.45
USD
Costs Of Goods Sold
$188,804.35
USD
$8,371.76
USD
Taxes Paid
$53,099.69
USD
$10,188.51
USD
Net Income
-$979,832.86
USD
-$14,074.19
USD
Risks
A crowdfunding investment involves risk. You should not invest any funds in this offering unless you can afford to lose your entire investment. In making an investment decision, investors must rely on their own examination of the issuer and the terms of the offering, including the merits and risks involved. These securities have not been recommended or approved by any federal or state securities commission or regulatory authority. Furthermore, these authorities have not passed upon the accuracy or adequacy of this document. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission does not pass upon the merits of any securities offered or the terms of the offering, nor does it pass upon the accuracy or completeness of any offering document or literature. These securities are offered under an exemption from registration; however, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has not made an independent determination that these securities are exempt from registration.
Updates
Notice of Funds Disbursement
5 days ago[The following is an automated notice from the StartEngine team].
Hello!
As you might know, Mycroft AI has exceeded its minimum funding goal. When a company reaches its minimum on StartEngine, it's about to begin withdrawing funds. If you invested in Mycroft AI be on the lookout for an email that describes more about the disbursement process.
This campaign will continue to accept investments until its indicated closing date.
Thanks for funding the future.
-StartEngine
Mycroft Update for June 2018
8 days agoGeneral Note: We send investors and stakeholders an update similar to this one every month.
Note to Residents of Canada and the United Kingdom: After several lengthy discussions with StartEngine and our attorneys we've determined that we can't take investments from Canada or the United Kingdom through this platform. While we'd really love to have you as investors in Mycroft, right now it simply isn't possible. I've brought this to their attention as a serious problem and I encourage you to bring your concerns to StartEngine directly by e-mailing their team at contact@startengine.com and urge them to resolve this problem.
Mycroft Update for June 2018
Tons of progress at Mycroft this month. Not only did we make significant improvments to the technology stack, we were the momentum leader in US crowdfunding, our community expanded into gaming and we began passing our data to Mozilla to help improve DeepSpeech’s performance for our application.
For those of you too busy to read our update in full:
[TL;DR]
- Our Title III fundraising opportunity is going fast. If you haven’t backed it, you should.
- Printed circuit boards for the Mark II have arrived.
- Three thousand Mycroft users have opted-in to share their data.
- The new voice of Mycroft is done, plumbed and comes online this month.
- Mycroft loves Mozilla. DeepSpeech is now being trained to better serve Mycroft users.
- Our developer community has Mycroft working with Unreal Engine. Gamers are about to get access to a real in-game AI.
[/TL;DR]
Rocking the Fundraising: Our SEC Title III fundraising opportunity hosted by StartEngine now has 250 investors. We are on track to hit the $1.07M cap. Thanks to our awesome investors Mycroft was the StartEngine momentum leader last month and is featured as one of the most popular crowdfunding efforts on NewChip right now.
PCBs Are Here! Printed circuit boards are back from the board house and are being populated this week. We’ll be loading software next week and should have the first functional Mark II pre-production prototype by the end of the month. Everyone here is very excited.
Mycrofts! Prepare for Glory! By default we do not log or store data supplied by people who use Mycroft, but we’ve asked community members to volunteer their data in order to improve our machine learning models. This week we crossed the 3,000 mark. 3,000 people who use Mycroft have decided to trust us with their data. We’re using the data to improve our Precise wake word spotter, DeepSpeech speech to text engine, Padatious intent parser and the Mimic speech synthesis engine.
One Can of Kusal: Speaking of Mimic, our first production voice is in the can and ready to roll out. It is an American male voice supplied by our intern ( and champion debater ) Kusal Kularatne. This is the first production Mimic 2.0 voice and it will improve over time, but it sounds great and has just enough“robot” in it to remind users they are speaking with a machine.
The human voice is the most perfect instrument of all. - Arvo Part, Composer.
This cake is great, it is so delicious and moist. - GLaDOS, Aperture Science personality core.
The other place this data is helping is with the DeepSpeech speech to text engine we are collaborating with Mozilla on. We are now feeding real world data from Mycroft users into the DeepSpeech data set where it is helping improve performance for our use case. Anyone can help with this effort by tagging speech samples at https://home.mycroft.ai under “Tagging” > “DeepSpeech”.
Mycroft Becomes Unreal: This week one of our community members, @joshua-tree, did the first integration between the Unreal Engine used to power thousands of video games across dozens of platforms. This is an early step toward eventual integration of Mycroft into virtual environments where people will be able to speak to an AI to improve game play. In 2017 the video game industry reached $108B in revenue.
Notice of Funds Disbursement
18 days ago[The following is an automated notice from the StartEngine team].
Hello!
As you might know, Mycroft AI has exceeded its minimum funding goal. When a company reaches its minimum on StartEngine, it's about to begin withdrawing funds. If you invested in Mycroft AI be on the lookout for an email that describes more about the disbursement process.
This campaign will continue to accept investments until its indicated closing date.
Thanks for funding the future.
-StartEngine
Mycroft & Mozilla – an Excellent Partnership + Leveling the Private Investment Playing Field
23 days agoMozilla held its annual all hands meeting in San Francisco and paid for our CTO Steve Penrod to attend. Steve’s team at Mycroft has been working closely with the Mozilla DeepSpeech team to improve the state of the art in open source automated speech recognition and this was an opportunity to sync up.
Mozilla has identified the voice market as critical to the future of the company and Mycroft is square in the middle of it representing the open community. Take at look at Steve’s re-cap of the event and stay tuned for future announcements about Mozilla and Mycroft.
In other news this week, Felix Salmon wrote a great piece in Wired about how the inability to invest in private companies takes away opportunities for small investors.
His basic point is that the huge gains investors realized in companies like 1990’s Amazon are no longer available to small investors. Instead VC firms scoop up all of the double digit gains and investors are only able to participate once the companies are mature and go public.
Here at Mycroft we couldn’t agree more, which is why we launched our StartEngine campaign and are accepting investments from anyone. If you want to join us on our journey to create an AI that runs anywhere and interacts exactly like a person, go ahead and invest now.
Joshua Montgomery |CEO | Mycroft AI
300 E 39thSt, Ste 4I, Kansas City, MO 64111
joshua.montgomery@mycroft.ai
https://mycroft.ai
A Successful Week of Successful Success
30 days agoOur first week at StartEngine was a great...success. Thanks to all of the investors out there that believe in what we are doing Mycroft was the top ranked equity crowdfunding campaign in the county last week according to Crowditz. That strong momentum has continued this week as more and more early stage investors discover our opportunity. If you haven’t backed the campaign yet, now is a great time to do it. Invest now.
Mycroft also landed in a couple of new publications last week including the cover of Raspi Magazine and a nice mention in Linux Journal. If you are a maker or hacker consider spending your weekend playing with Mycroft on Raspberry Pi, you’ll be amazed at what you can do.
Speaking of doing cool things with Mycroft, our community member Christopher Rogers built a fantastic skill this week that allows Mycroft users to create complex routines using nothing but their voice. No coding skills required. Check it out.
Special thanks to StartEngine this week. They’ve been very supportive of our campaign and we’re excited to be working with them.
If you haven't already, invest now.
Joshua Montgomery |CEO | Mycroft AI
300 E 39thSt, Ste 4I, Kansas City, MO 64111
joshua.montgomery@mycroft.ai
https://mycroft.ai
Mycroft Zooms Past $100K – Onward and Upward
about 1 month agoWho would have guessed that our first week on StartEngine would be better than ourfirst week on Kickstarter? It has been great to see all of the interest in Mycroft - the world’s open voice assistant.
As a result of our success we’ve now got community members in the forums who’ve changed their bios to “Mycroft Investor”. That is awesome to see. We want the men and women who are collaborating with us to build Mycroft to benefit from the company’s growth.
So what else did we do this week? In addition to managing the StartEngine campaign we’removing forward with the selection of our contract manufacturer. I toured a candidate’s facility in Freemont yesterday and was hugely impressed with their automated assembly line. The software team continues to make good progress and our CTO Steve Penrod has been in San Francisco as a guest of Mozilla. Good things may come of that.
Based on the rate of investment and our past experience in crowdfunding on Kickstarter, Indiegogo and Crowdfunder it looks to us like this campaign will reach its full allocation of $1.07M so if you’re interested in owning a piece of the future of voice please consider investing in Mycroft now.
Thank you,
Joshua Montgomery |CEO | Mycroft AI
300 E 39thSt, Ste 4I, Kansas City, MO 64111
joshua.montgomery@mycroft.ai
https://mycroft.ai
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