We’re sick of it. We just want to get to work and focus on getting you (and all other others searching for an alternative to Siri and Alexa) a private voice assistant. 

Our passions are open source, right to repair, and privacy. When you support Mycroft, you’re supporting an ideal. We want to come back to our community, who share those passions and ideals, and ask you to consider financially supporting a path toward technological utopianism.

To our existing investors, Kickstarter and Indiegogo backers: Thank you. We wouldn’t have had a fighting chance without your support. We understand the frustration expressed by so many in our community - WHERE. IS. THE. MARK. II? We’ve had challenges with a re-design. Other challenges consisted of delivery. Yet other hurdles came in the form of a bad partnership with a contract manufacturer. With hard work and a lot of support, we’re still here. 

These are trying times to make any high risk investments. For those of you able to take that risk, it is also prime time to enter a promising market. Over the next few weeks we’re going to share our technical roadmap, why Mycroft is important, why Mycroft can succeed, and then we’re closing the campaign so we can get to work. 

Thank you for joining us in the fight against the dark arts to provide an alternative to black box voice assistants. 

If you'd like to receive our weekly newsletters which contain hardware, software, and business development updates, sign up at https://mycroft.ai/newsletters/

How we could raise $15M, but the SEC won't let us

Note: This missive comes to you from the keyboard of Michael Lewis, CEO, rather than the normal marketing and communication team.

All of us at Mycroft are true believers in our mission to deliver privacy-respecting voice assistants and technology. But while privacy and openness are our foundational values, they are not the limit of our ambitions. In fact, I’ve come to think of Mycroft not as a technology company, but as a social-change company. To illustrate this, I’ve invited every member of our team to share their personal story over the coming weeks. There is an impressive diversity of hopes for what we’ll achieve.

How does that relate to the click-baity subject line? Well, 95% of you are not investors, so I infer that you are most likely here because of an interest in privacy or open source. Since there are over 30,000 people signed up to our mailing list, I read that as a substantial show of support for our values. If every one of you could contribute the minimum amount to our Regulation Crowdfunding campaign we’d raise over $15M. However, while decentralized ownership of the company comports with our ideals for decentralized ownership of data (i.e. privacy) and decentralized ownership of technology (i.e. open source), the SEC limit for this type of funding is $5M per year. Nevertheless, here, as in grassroots democracy, a lot of small checks can be more powerful than a few big ones.

What we do builds on the work of countless others. From the generous contributions of the open source code we use, to selfless acts of standing up for one’s rights, I find inspiration in many places. As our funding campaign draws to a close, we share our stories in the hope that you will find something that inspires you to renew your support for Mycroft. Money may be a necessary evil, but together we can prove there is a viable alternative to surveillance capitalism and create technology where our values thrive.

Sincerely,

Michael Lewis

CEO, Mycroft AI Inc.

Invest in what you believe

These are trying times. 

We could give you a summary of the absolute poop show that is our world today but you're good- you know. Seriously, what happened to a good old fashioned car chase? Remember when the OJ scandal was what you were excited to tune into the news about? Maybe you don't. Who reads these things anyway?

Instead, it's Monday. How about some jokes? 

Use these at your discretion, DO NOT give us any credit. We just wanna make you look good.

Dead sea scroll to the bottom for the answers.

1.) What is the key to life?

2.) What do you call somebody without a body or a nose?

3.) What did the fish say when it ran into a wall?

Oh wait ya, we're trying to raise money to produce a voice assistant that's for YOU not for marketers, trackers and bears. Yes we meant to say bears. Who knows who gets to analyze the user data the other guys collect?

LAUGH FACTORY

1.) B Sharp

2.) Nobody Nose

3.) Dam. 

Good luck out there, folks. Seriously, there could be bears. 

If you'd like to receive our weekly newsletters which contain hardware, software, and business development updates, sign up at https://mycroft.ai/newsletters/ 

Who knows, maybe we'll include some more killer jokes. 

We’re ending our campaign early so we can focus on development. 

The new closing date is December 31. 

More to come soon!

PS- This is good news. Not so much for those who aren't able to invest at the pre-production valuation. 

The end of our campaign is on the horizon. We thought it would be a good idea to give an update about where Mycroft is at concerning business, hardware and software development...oh my. 

Business

Mycroft signed a contract with a billion dollar contract manufacturing company, Aztech. With the hardware design changes Mycroft has undergone, the global parts shortage, and our procurement, a ship date has somehow remained unchanged! More on that in the hardware section. 

Another notable development on the business side was our channel partner, Neon AI, signing a contract with a Fortune 100 industrial giant using Mycroft core. Ongoing Business To Business transactions using the private, open source voice assistant - Mycroft - is happy progress on our business road map. 

Podcasts

Mycroft founder, Joshua Montgomery, has been featured on various podcasts throughout the Fall. If you missed any of them, here are links:

Sustain Podcast

Startup Grind - Fireside Chat

Linux 4 Everyone

Toxic Tech Companies Deserve The 'DEATH PENALTY' | L4E Clips

The Homelab Show - Learn Linux Tv

Coming up...Wake up: The Truth About Alexa, with Lauren Johnson

Consumer Electronics Show (CES)

Mycroft’s founder will be speaking on January 5th with a panel at CES 2022! 

Session Description: After years of trading privacy for efficiency, consumers now expect data security. Hear how new AI innovation is helping.

Hardware - Manufacturing and Production

Design changes - Why?

Requests for accessible ethernet access. Despite the ubiquitous use of Wifi nowadays, there are scenarios where ethernet access is required or can provide a much stronger connection. In order to allow users to have the option, we are moving the ethernet plug-in to the back of the device. You will no longer need to remove a panel in order to access it. This orientation is also more ideal for production. We are now able to move the fan to the back of the design and keep the movement of the molds (direction of pull) all in one direction. This reduces cost and complexity. However, it does mean changing all of the internal mounting bosses, and switching the order of assembly.

There are other changes we are making to the internal hardware (re: chips) but we won’t bore you with that for now. What’s important is that these changes are not affecting the ship date for production, as that is primarily determined by the chips with long-lead times. We have enough inventory on-hand to produce prototypes, but not nearly enough for production, yet.

Software

The graphical user interfaces for all the essential Skills are now in place. These will continue to be expanded upon over time as we add in more detailed representations of different queries, actions and answers.

We have also been getting fantastic feedback from the community on our Skills interaction mock up videos. These videos show a range of possibilities for how Skills might interact with each other and respond to potential conflicts. If you haven’t yet seen them, you can find the last few here in the Community Forums.

As we continue to get feedback on this, we are doing some additional clean up on the boot and bring up sequence. After conducting some user testing, it was clear we didn’t have the initial out of the box experience quite right. So we’re tackling some bugs, improving recovery processes if something does go wrong during setup, and giving it some extra visual polish while we’re there. You can see exactly what we’re working on here in our list of upcoming sprints.

“Alexa collects more of your data than any other smart assistant” comes as a surprise to no one, collecting 37 of the 48 data points assessed. (https://www.pcmag.com/news/amazons-alexa-collects-more-of-your-data-than-any-other-smart-assistant)

According to a Reviews.org survey, Google Home Assistant collected the least amount of data points (28/48).

How does Mycroft measure up to that survey? They didn’t ask but we’ll answer.

Of the 48 possible data points, Mycroft collects…

Drumroll? Sorry.

3

THREE! Those three data points being, ‘Location of device or computer’, ‘IP address’, and ‘WiFi credentials if connected within a smart home network’. 

In our defense, we need to know what city/state the user is located in order to respond to a weather prompt (i.e.). We also know the IP address of the device on the internal network, NOT its internet IP address. Lastly, the Mycroft device needs internet to communicate with servers but wifi credentials are only stored on the device itself (not in some cloud “somewhere”.)  

Those Big Tech participants would’ve been praying to have been graded on a curve if Mycroft was involved. 

Invest in your privacy.

If you'd like to receive our weekly newsletters which contain hardware, software, and business development updates, sign up at https://mycroft.ai/newsletters/

Linux For Everyone hosted Mycroft founder, Joshua Montgomery, to talk about “An Invasion of Privacy.”

Despite the new movement towards asking for permission to track your usage, the host and creator of Linux For Everyone, Jason Evangelho, highlighted that the key word here is that they ask to track your usage. That doesn’t mean that they don’t just because you say, “no thanks.”

A study on Lockdown Privacy stated, “We found that app-tracking transparency made no difference in the total number of active third party trackers and had a minimal impact on the total number of tracking connection attempts. We further confirmed that detailed personal or device data was being sent to trackers in almost all cases.”

Help us offer Mycroft to the masses. This is getting ridiculous. 

Our humble opinion is that Thanksgiving is one of the best United States holidays. Certainly this post will not age well, and something awful will come out about the actual day in history, but for now we appreciate the premise of simply being thankful for what one has. 

Part of that gratitude is for those you gather around the table with. But the conversations that go on with your family, friends, extended family, ...knucklehead uncle, …….clueless neighbor’s girlfriend….not every conversation is progressive and NOT every conversation needs to be remembered.

Mycroft won’t listen to whatever happens at your dinner table. Feel free to look up your gravy recipe in peace. 

Happy Thanksgiving from The Mycroft Team! We’re thankful you read this update and are interested in Mycroft.

If you'd like to receive our weekly newsletters which contain hardware, software, and business development updates, sign up at https://mycroft.ai/newsletters/

If you're here, you already know that you can invest in Mycroft at StartEngine.com/Mycroftai

Democratizing investment in startups is something that Mycroft supports - not just because we are a startup - but because we believe that anyone should be able to use their money to back the things they care about. If billionaires, corporations and lobbyists can do it - everyone should be able to do it.

We've written in the past about different ways that people can compound their wealth using assets like their self-directed IRAs so we won't get into it again. But we do want to restate the importance of privacy and user agency. Help the nerds that are making a voice technology for the people. And, maybe get rich doing it. 

Invest in THE private voice assistant.

If you'd like to receive our weekly newsletters which contain hardware, software, and business development updates, sign up at https://mycroft.ai/newsletters/

Invest in THE private voice assistant.

If you'd like to receive our weekly newsletters which contain hardware, software, and business development updates, sign up at https://mycroft.ai/newsletters/

Part of Mycroft’s Road Map is white labeling our software for enterprise business integrations. Recently our channel partner, Neon AI signed a contract with a Fortune 100 industrial giant using Mycroft core.  

"Neon chooses Mycroft above other options because they are the major voice technology player in the open source community. Open Source is important to us because it provides for community, transparency and ubiquity. When we share code we all gain. We know that Mycroft shares these values and we look forward to a long business relationship with Mycroft and their well-established developer community."

-Richard Leeds, CEO, Neon AI

This development provides another demonstration of Mycroft integration into a large enterprise scenario. We’re happy to see the Open Source ball rolling and are proud to be a part of it. More importantly, this is demonstrable proof that privacy is valued and desired on a business enterprise scale, and Mycroft is the best solution for fulfilling that need.

Now is the time to invest in the good guys; Mycroft is THE private voice solution.

If you'd like to receive our weekly newsletters which contain hardware, software, and business development updates, sign up at https://mycroft.ai/newsletters/

Mycroft wasn’t the first to realize the importance of privacy; that subject has been covered since George Orwell’s 1984 (and earlier), but we have honored it since the company’s inception in 2016. 

The scary reality of always being recorded or on camera is something that has arguably been developing since the late 90’s. Not everyone wants to be famous. Even celebrities talk at length about their desire for privacy. Big Tech has taken notice of this whether it was caused by lawsuit after lawsuit, or, recognition of the potential in the market. 

Dozens of states target Google's app store in antitrust suit (The Independent)

Apple’s Privacy Mythology Doesn’t Match Reality (Wired)

9 stories about switching an open source alternative in 2020 (Opensource.com) (Mycroft featured)

Do you trust Amazon with your privacy? What about Google? Without being an actual hacker and looking at a company’s internal operating systems, how does one audit a company that says “we’re only using your data for this, this and this.” 

With Mycroft, a 67,000 strong developer community does just that. Because we’re Open Source, anyone can take a look at the back end of Mycroft and where it does not store your data. 

Big Tech says, “trust us.” Mycroft says, “check for yourself.”

Now is the time to invest in the good guys; Mycroft is THE private voice solution.

If you'd like to receive our weekly newsletters which contain hardware, software, and business development updates, sign up at https://mycroft.ai/newsletters/

“Alexa collects more of your data than any other smart assistant” comes as a surprise to no one, collecting 37 of the 48 data points assessed. (https://www.pcmag.com/news/amazons-alexa-collects-more-of-your-data-than-any-other-smart-assistant)

According to a Reviews.org survey, Google Home Assistant collected the least amount of data points (28/48).

How does Mycroft measure up to that survey? They didn’t ask but we’ll answer.

Of the 48 possible data points, Mycroft collects…

Drumroll? Sorry.

3

THREE! Those three data points being, ‘Location of device or computer’, ‘IP address’, and ‘WiFi credentials if connected within a smart home network’. 

In our defense, we need to know what city/state the user is located in order to respond to a weather prompt (i.e.). We also know the IP address of the device on the internal network, NOT its internet IP address. Lastly, the Mycroft device needs internet to communicate with servers but wifi credentials are only stored on the device itself (not in some cloud “somewhere”.)  

Those Big Tech participants would’ve been praying to have been graded on a curve if Mycroft was involved. 

Invest in your privacy.

If you'd like to receive our weekly newsletters which contain hardware, software, and business development updates, sign up at https://mycroft.ai/newsletters/

“The Mycroft AI Inc team is very aligned with my family office, startup accelerator, and startup in terms of decentralization and distribution of centralized power by giving it back to the people in the form of a private and open voice assisted AI.”

Here is a link for more on Anderson Tan:

https://www.techshake.asia/about

Mycroft is literally by the people for the people. We want to ensure that user agency, privacy and customizability stay within the hands of users. Your personal assistant should be yours.

Personalize your personal AI. Invest in Mycroft today.

If you'd like to receive our weekly newsletters which contain hardware, software, and business development updates, sign up at https://mycroft.ai/newsletters/ 

The founder of Mycroft, Joshua Montgomery, will be doing a live discussion on Friday, October 29th, hosted by 8 x 8 Meet : a private, open source meeting platform

We wanted to open up the opportunity for investors and/or anyone interested in Mycroft’s projected course a chance to discuss the future of the company directly.

Topics that will be covered are:

-Roadmap

-Mycroft Partners

-Marketability

-Mycroft and HIPAA compliance 

Click here to register with Mycroft and we will send an invite directly to your email with a calendar invite. 

Thank you and we hope to “see” you Friday!

Are you invested in shaping the future? Create your own personal assistant with Mycroft.

A smart speaker, by its nature, is listening to everything in the room, all of the time, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. 

That’s not a problem in the context of smart speakers that belong to an individual where they control the data and they have complete control of their experience. But the reality is that the voice market has come to be dominated by companies that engage in significant surveillance capitalism. 

They monitor their customers or their users all day long, learn as much as they can about them, and then use that information to market goods and services both for themselves and third party partners. Mycroft solves this problem by giving our customers control of their data. 

Supplying them with a software stack that by default collects NO information about what’s going on within their homes, and doing it in an open and transparent way. The broader Mycroft community has access to the source code and access to the system and can validate and verify that the company is not collecting data and is continuing to preserve our customer’s privacy. 

Those that believe that voice is important and believe that privacy is an important component of the voice market should invest in Mycroft because we truly are the only company currently building voice assistants that can credibly say:

We provide a private solution. 

Invest In The Private Voice Assistant, A $25B Industry, And Growing Annually

If you'd like to receive our weekly newsletters which contain hardware, software, and business development updates, sign up at https://mycroft.ai/newsletters/

[The following is an automated notice from the StartEngine team].

Hello!

As you might know, Mycroft AI, Inc. 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, Inc. 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

In 2019, Microsoft polled thousands of people asking what their hesitance is to buying a smart speaker. First, thanks for doing the leg work Microsoft. 

Second, Mycroft’s market exists.

Of the 7,000 individuals asked about their concerns with digital assistants, 41% said “That it is actively listening and/or recording me.” 31% said, “That the information it gathers is not private.” Those concerns have proven to be legitimate as Google, Amazon and Apple are all in current lawsuits for inadvertently listening to their customers. 

The study’s findings are fascinating unto themself. What’s exciting is the potential that investors have in getting on to the ground floor of a company that is building a solution to the concerns people have with an emerging technology. 

Invest in the company that puts privacy first and provides an alternative to Big Tech’s always-listening business model.

If you'd like to receive our weekly newsletters which contain hardware, software, and business development updates, sign up at https://mycroft.ai/newsletters/

Here at Mycroft we’ve had an opportunity to work with a lot of corporate and government partners to build technology and deploy it in a wide variety of environments. 

We’ve recently partnered with a hospital on the East Coast of the United States that’s developed some technology around using voice technology to prompt COVID 19 patients to prone (to change their position) to improve their breathing. By using a voice technology, nurses can prompt their patients to change their position without actually dressing out in their PPE and walking into the hospital room.

Another great example of where people are using the Mycroft software stack in important ways is NASA. We recently completed an SBIR in partnership with Texas A&M University and NASA to use voice assistant technology in the preliminary satellite design process. That’s one small example of where technologies like voice assistance can be important in space exploration, both here on the ground - when people are designing space craft and designing space systems - and eventually, in space where people will be using voice assistants to control space craft and control space systems in environments where controls are not necessarily immediately handy.

Some of the other places people are using Mycroft are our friends at Q.bo, in Barcelona, who have been building Mycroft into their robot which is entirely open hardware! 

-Lume Cube is building Mycroft into their product, which is a cute little LED cube that allows folks to do all kinds of different animations. 

-The folks at Chatterbox who’ve built an educational system for children are using Mycroft as a voice interface for their system. 

-Lastly, there are thousands and thousands of individuals out there who are using Mycroft on the Mark I platform, on the Mark II developer kits, and on their own Raspberry Pi on their computer to do everything from controlling television content to playing music, to rapping alongside famous rap artists. 

Mycroft really can solve problems in a variety of different industries. In each one of those industries, we have an opportunity to become the leading player when it comes to providing a private solution. 

That’s a huge opportunity for us as a company and also for potential Mycroft investors who might want to come along for the ride.

 If you'd like to receive our weekly newsletters which contain hardware, software, and business development updates, sign up at https://mycroft.ai/newsletters/

When Mycroft was founded, values that were made evident early on were customizability and the pursuit of a voice assistant that was open source. What came to be integral to our ethos was privacy.

Voice is the future of how humans and computers interact. People will want to customize that experience by building and changing their “relationship” with their digital assistants. And, they will want these experiences to be private. An A & B conversation, so to speak. We don’t need our personal conversations utilized as a marketing and sales funnel.

Mycroft stumbled into the fastest growing market in the history of technology. We have $1M in pre-orders for the Mark II, a community of 65,000 developers and early adopters (growing every day), and we’re able to build a technology that embodies our values: a voice assistant that is open, customizable, and last but not least, private.

Invest and help shape the future of artificial intelligence with Mycroft.

If you'd like to receive our weekly newsletters which contain hardware, software, and business development updates, sign up at https://mycroft.ai/newsletters/

“I invested in Mycroft because I believe in putting my money to work toward a future I actually want to live in—one where my family can enjoy the convenience of an AI assistant without having to give up our privacy."

Sometimes great minds truly do think alike. Wayt was an early investor in Mycroft AI and has expressed his intent to actively alter the future of voice technology. This brings people like Aaron Swartz to mind. 

If you don’t know who Aaron Swartz is, please, look him up on Wikipedia. Aaron was a champion of publicly accessible information and did everything in his power to deliver it to the masses. Those individuals who use the power they possess to direct actual change for the betterment of humanity are the definition of integrity and charisma. 

Thank you, Wayt. And thank you to all of our investors for helping us make a desirable future into a reality. We hope we’re making Aaron proud. 

Now is the time to invest in the private voice assistant. To a happy future!

If you'd like to receive our weekly newsletters which contain hardware, software, and business development updates, sign up at https://mycroft.ai/newsletters/

Sustain has posted their interview with Mycroft’s founder, Joshua Montgomery, to their website and various social media channels! 

TL;DH (Too Long; Didn’t Hear)

-Mycroft and the Patent Trolls - Josh discusses the children’s book he has written

-The Open Source community - Mycroft just passed 65,000 active developers

-Making Mycroft sustainable: creating a spectrum of contribution for the software. 

-Ethical boundaries in face of competition: Mycroft democratizes equity funding. We’re different from the commonly accepted operating systems that are constantly being indicted for privacy violations. 

-Open Source Business Model: With voice being adopted at a rate faster than the iPhone, 20% of customers don’t trust current voice tech options. Mycroft addresses those with privacy concerns as the private voice assistant. 

Now is the time to invest in THE private voice assistant.

If you'd like to receive our weekly newsletters which contain hardware, software, and business development updates, sign up at https://mycroft.ai/newsletters/

One of the major impediments to currently available smart speakers is that they do not offer a wide variety of native speech recognition. English is great and all but… you know, what if you don’t like, speak it?

Smart speakers have the potential to help with language on all sorts of fronts: education (practicing a second language), access (enabling minorities the ability to use voice technology), and assisting language, which can be so essential to culture, stay alive through ongoing use. 

Thanks largely to the efforts of @Hkalbasi Mycroft now includes initial Farsi support. 

For any new language this requires both direct translation of existing vocabulary and dialogue, as well as the localization of common parsing and formatting functions. These functions enable Mycroft to understand and express things like numbers and dates in natural speech.

To speakers! Indigenous languages, Indigenous peoples, and Mycroft - facilitating native language detection for all. 

Invest in us - all of us. 

If you'd like to receive our weekly newsletters which contain hardware, software, and business development updates, sign up at https://mycroft.ai/newsletters/

Last week, Mycroft’s founder sat with an interviewer in Honolulu to talk about the honorable struggles of startups. The chat is aptly named: Startup Grind - Fireside Chat. 

These discussions generally take place in front of a live audience where the energy is loaded, there are some nerves, and equal excitement. This year, as could likely be surmised, the chat took place without an audience but was nonetheless a thrill and honor. 

Joshua has started various small businesses but none like a tech startup. The trials and tribulations of hardware, software, and development are never ending. However, the determination and perseverance required to be an entrepreneur are met by a community that wants to see Mycroft succeed just as much its employees. 

Check out the Fireside Chat with Joshua Montgomery, and join us in bringing a private voice technology to market today.

If you'd like to receive our weekly newsletters which contain hardware, software, and business development updates, sign up at https://mycroft.ai/newsletters/

How many Big Tech conglomerates are in the S&P 500 top 10 list? A concentration of our daily internet activity - Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, Alphabet Class A (Google), Alphabet Class C - dominates the list. A small number of entities influence the global economy and are heavily relied upon in our day-to-day lives. 

Social media and messaging occupy an inordinate amount of our attention, work and social lives, it’s no wonder an online college directory became the juggernaut that is Facebook & Instagram & Whatsapp today. These companies that are owned by a single entity have one weak spot, and when that mother ship goes down, they all go down. It's a stupefied wonder that follows. 

Mycroft wants to thank Signal, Mattermost and Telegram for staying afloat during that social media armageddon on Monday. What do these companies all have in common? They’re Not Big Tech companies. 

One company to rule them all is not the direction we want to be going in. Help us bring an alternative, privacy-focused, open source voice technology to market...asap.  

By Huzaifa abedeen - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=101936473

Back in the 90s during the original dot com boom, companies went public a lot quicker than they do today. Companies like Amazon, for example, did a really early stage seed investment, took a little  bit of venture money, and then went public. And what that means is that a lot of the growth of the company took place while the company was a public company that anybody could invest in. Fast forward to today where venture capital has a lot more funding in it and there’s an abundance of private money and companies are staying private a lot longer. For example, Space X was founded almost 20 years ago. They have huge capital requirements because they’re making all of these fixed infrastructure investments and yet they’re still a private company. 

And that’s changing today with the advent of what’s called Reg CF crowdfunding which allows companies to go out and raise small discreet rounds of financing using what’s effectively a quasi-public mechanism, so anyone can invest. Hopefully we’ll see a return to the 1990’s where your average Joe and Jane can get the same types of investment opportunities that venture capitalists in Silicon Valley get. 

Now is your early chance to invest in voice technology

If you'd like to receive our weekly newsletters which contain hardware, software, and business development updates, sign up at https://mycroft.ai/newsletters/

“I invested in Mycroft's early seed rounds for two reasons: 1) Voice AI struck me as an inevitability, given the trend of computer interfaces becoming increasingly natural and intuitive; 2) I couldn't accept a world in which we let Big Tech get a stranglehold on Voice (given their track record of using smart speakers to push ads on us, spy on us, sell our private information, and generally violate our privacy).”

    -Rob Ness

Privacy is priceless. 

Invest in the voice assistant that respects that privacy. 

If you'd like to receive our weekly newsletters which contain hardware, software, and business development updates, sign up at https://mycroft.ai/newsletters/

You can now invest in startups with a self-directed IRA. 

Peter Thiel, of Paypal mafia fame, was an early investor in Facebook. Using a self-directed Roth IRA, he was able to grow that investment in a staggering way. Fast forward twenty years, and Propublica refers to Thiel as “Lord of the Roths” with holdings in the BILLIONS within his Roth alone. 

We’ll put additional commentary aside on the unfair reality of wealth inequality and get to the point: ANYONE can do this through the SEC’s democratization of equity crowdfunding. The steps are simple:

1.  Open a self-directed IRA with a platform like ALTO or Equity Trust. Both are simple platforms that are made for using one’s IRA to invest in startups, buy crypto, or purchase other assets beyond the traditional options. Additionally, help is available on both sites via help@altoira.com (ALTO) or NewAccountsETC@trustetc.com (Equity Trust). 

2. After transferring funds from your existing IRA to your self-directed IRA with a platform like ALTO or Equity Trust, log in to https://www.startengine.com/mycroftai, and click 

3. Input contact information, investment amount, etc. and check the box stating “I want to invest as a non-person legal entity such as a company, trust, or self-directed IRA."

Note: Investing with traditional IRAs uses your pre-tax assets while investing with Roth IRAs uses after-tax assets. 

Because investing is a long-term strategy, and IRAs are essentially a savings account, the two go hand-in-hand in making your finances work for you. While Mycroft would never promise a return, the potential behind investing in voice technology at a time when the market is booming is worth getting excited about.

Invest in Mycroft and yourself today.

If you'd like to receive our weekly newsletters which contain hardware, software, and business development updates, sign up at https://mycroft.ai/newsletters/

SpaceX’s Starlink team has recently started launching low orbiting satellites 60 at a time.  In fact, on January 6th 2020 SpaceX became the largest satellite operator in the world.  The system the SpaceX team is building will be able to deliver ultra-high-speed broadband at extremely low latency….globally.

But there is a privacy risk in having all of those low orbiting, high bandwidth satellites up there:  those satellites could become a global version of Gorgon Stare.

What is Gorgon Stare? Head to our blog to find out.

Privacy matters. Invest in yours today.

If you'd like to receive our weekly newsletters which contain hardware, software, and business development updates, sign up at https://mycroft.ai/newsletters/

“The world needs an open voice assistant as an alternative to the platforms controlled by the large tech corporations.”

    -Albert Wenger

If you’re not paying for the product, you ARE the product. Our investors are individuals who believe in Mycroft’s roadmap to bring the world an Open Source Voice Assistant that doesn’t require the Big Brother element. 

Privacy matters. Support Mycroft. 

If you'd like to receive our weekly newsletters which contain hardware, software, and business development updates, sign up at https://mycroft.ai/newsletters/

Mycroft has signed an agreement with Aztech, an $800 Million company, to manufacture Mycroft’s smart speaker on a global scale. 

This will enable the company to fulfill the more than $1M in preorders for the Mark II. 

As always, thank you for your interest in Mycroft. 

NOW is the time to invest in THE private voice assistant.

If you would like to receive regular Mycroft updates in your inbox, you can use our SMS feature to join now.

Text 'Mycroft Updates' to (773) 770-4377 

Do you <3 the 90s? 

In 1997, a little company based out of a garage in Seattle decided to sell books via mail. Do we need to explain further about who we’re talking about? Actually, there were a lot of those garage people...

In 24 years, that company became the juggernaut of snail mail. Ironic that one of the slowest methods of travel is what enabled Jeff Bezos to ride on one of the fastest rockets known to mankind? Your choice.

During their garage band days, investors could have bought equity in Amazon for $18 per share at the company’s IPO. One famous example states that an individual who invested $10,000 in 1997, would have holdings valued at $12 Million today. 

Mycroft is offering the chance to invest in a technology that is being adopted at a rate faster than the iPhone. Now is the time to take guided risk. To those who have already invested, we hope to cheers you on our solar-powered yachts in 24 years. 

According to Statista, the “number of digital voice assistants in use worldwide was expected to nearly double between 2019 and 2022, reaching 6.41 billion units by 2022.” 

Mycroft addresses the 41% of the population that is concerned with their privacy when it comes to those digital assistants. The software is private, open sourced, and customizable.

Thank you for supporting Mycroft. We plan to do right by you and the rest of the world by bringing an alternative to Big Brother. 

We had the pleasure of chatting with Eric Berry, Richard Littauer, and Alyssa Wright at Sustain, a podcast whose focus is “[bringing] together practitioners, sustainers, funders, researchers and maintainers of the open source ecosystem.” While open source is our homeland, many may not fully understand what it actually means. 

By definition, open source is information that is publicly accessible and modifiable. Internet engines like Mozilla, encyclopedias like Wikipedia, educational affiliations like Creative Commons, even textbooks can be open source.  When a software is open source, like Mycroft, it means that the public is able to access, modify, improve, and geekify the contents therein.

At Mycroft, we believe the idiom, “there’s always room for better.” 

Thank you for helping us to improve whenever and wherever we can. 

Friday September 10th, 2021

Mycroft’s founder, Joshua Montgomery, was the recent guest on the Homelab Podcast with hosts Tom Lawrence of Lawrence Systems and Jay LaCroix of Learn Linux TV. First, we’d like to thank Tom and Jay for having Josh on the show! The conversation was easy and right up everyone’s alley. The trio discussed privacy in the face of Big Tech as well as Mycroft’s fight against Patent Assertion Entities (Patent Trolls for short). We’ll leave the rest of the nitty gritty details about the show for your viewing pleasure. 

    If any of our followers have podcasts, YouTube channels, blogs, or other outlets of their own, and would like to discuss privacy, technology, startup investment, and/or entrepreneurship with Josh, feel free to email us at social@mycroft.ai. We’d be honored to continue the conversation and get the word out about privacy concerns. 

Wednesday September 8th, 2021

Improving the brains of Mycroft’s operating system is continuous. Our open source software allows for our community to make improvements in addition to those of our Developer Team.

Because of this ongoing effort, the software that drives Mycroft is consistently being improved. Here is a highlight of some of the changes since our last crowdfunding raise. Please click through to the linked blogs to learn more about each individual program. 

• Mycroft-GUI Framework

• Selene backend

• Common Query and IoT Frameworks

• Lingua Franca

• Voight Kampff test suite

• Plugin system for STT, TTS, Wake Word and Audio backend services

• Skill API

• Infrastructure Service Monitoring (blog post coming soon)

• New wake word more sensitive to non American males (blog post coming soon)

Each of these systems was an exceptional undertaking and are critical to providing the integrated, intuitive experience that you would expect from a consumer grade voice assistant. We’ve talked about a few of these in the past, but will be expanding on their development in future blog posts.

Thank you, as always, for your interest and support in Mycroft AI. 

Before you set out to enjoy your hopefully Laborless Weekend, we’d like to share a quote from one of our investors whose expertise has allowed him the privilege of putting financial fuel into promising opportunities:

“There are several large corporations that offer voice command interfaces to facilitate electronic features.  However, the privacy aspect is very concerning for many industries, including hospitals, government agencies and many more.  These segments of the market are virtually untapped and provide for a large opportunity for investment and development.  I believe that Mycroft provides a solution that is unique in the marketplace with an open source platform that can be adapted to a wide range of voice interface applications and is well posed to take advantage of that market space as it begins to burgeon.”

Richard E. Pickering

Harvard MBA

Entrepreneur with 28 US Patents

Wishing you all a happy, safe, and restful Labor Day Weekend. See you on Tuesday!

Mycroft Founder Joshua Montgomery recently hopped on a live chat on Youtube to give a brief update for the company and to respond to some commonly asked questions about Mycroft's manufacturing, operations, and development.

Check it out if you are interested and feel free to leave a comment so that we can respond to any other questions, comments, concerns in future live events. 

Lastly, don't forget to follow the channel to be notified of those future lives as well as the regular dev sync updates.

Guess what!?

The second round and last batch of Mark II Dev Kits (NOT to be confused with Mark II production units) have shipped! The Dev Kits are build-it-yourself and were geared toward our more tech-savvy crowd. 

These are extremely exciting times here as the Dev Kits give us a chance to have all of our early supporters test out our beta release software on development hardware, in the wild.

We are one step closer to production and will be keeping everyone abreast of our road to mass production. In the meantime, check out Duane's Product and Manufacturing Update here.

[The following is an automated notice from the StartEngine team].

Hello!

As you might know, Mycroft AI, Inc. 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, Inc. 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

We’ve been so happy to see our community growing since the start of our crowdfunding raise that it’s all we’ve talked about. Creating a voice technology/software is complex to say the least. We want to share with our investing community a little more about Mycroft as a company. 

Part of Mycroft’s software development consists of using Lingua Franca “- our multilingual parsing and formatting library.”  (Gesling, 2021, para. 1). Writing and architecting code can be a complex grey area in referencing existing language with original content. Add a dollop of open source and you can have a recipe for confusion. How does one “own” a language (re: code) that is based on other languages?

Our Director of Developer Relations, Kris Gesling, has written a fascinating piece on the notion of licensing a language and how Mycroft honors the law - no matter how ridiculous it may seem. Check it out here.

Reference

Gesling, K. (2021). Licensing a Language: How the copyright system abuses fundamental human rights. https://mycroft.ai/blog/licensing-a-language-how-the-copyright-system-abuses-fundamental-human-rights/

In this campaign Mycroft AI has 200 investors/new community members! In growing our community, we see the  demonstrable need and desire for a privacy-focused voice technology. By joining the over 1400 previous Reg CF investors, it is clear that Mycroft is favored to deliver a smart speaker capable of operating without making the customer the product. 

We are grateful to our new and returning investors. You see the need for a private alternative to Big Tech.

All good things come in 3’s. 

Like 3% bonus shares. 

We just passed the $300,000 in investments milestone. That must mean that our community knows a good thing when they see it. With the support from our previous backers and the objectifiable growth of our incoming community, it is apparent now more than ever that the world wants to control their privacy. 

Mycroft plans to deliver on that want. Thank you to those who have already invested!

For those who are tracking our progress, 3% bonus shares ends Monday, the 9th at 0600 ET. 

We just surpassed a quarter of our entire raise from 2018 in one week. $250,000!! We are over the moon, that harsh mistress, ( re: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein).

Thank you all for recognizing the progress Mycroft has made over the last couple of years and for your support in helping us bring a private voice assistant to market. 

Don’t forget about the 3% bonus shares for early bird investors. You know you want them.

We are honored to have over 100 investors join us within the first 72 hours of our raise to help us surpass our first $150,000 milestone. Thank you.

For any other early investors interested in taking advantage of our offering, there are early bird perks still available. Invest now and receive a bonus as our thank you for leading the way.