SOVA (Smart Open Virtual Assistant)

2019: The SOVA project will get 300 million rubles from fund supports of NTI

On August 23, 2019 Russian Venture Companies (RVC) announced that the SOVA project (Smart Open Virtual Assistant) assuming development of the open voice operating system — a software package for equipment of devices and applications the voice interface and developments of voice assistants, will get a financial support from Fund of support of projects of the National Technology Initiative (NTI) of the direction neyront. Nanosemantika Laboratory together with Ashmanov's Neuronets company is engaged in project development.

The total cost of the project will be about 400 million rubles, the fund of support of NTI will select more than 300 million rubles. In the next half a year attraction of additional private investments is planned — negotiations are conducted with three venture funds and one private investor.^[1]

The project is implemented in a format of consortium with involvement of the Russian universities MIPT, MSU and DVFU.

It is supposed that using the SOVA platform any will be able to create the voice or text virtual assistant and to build in him in the robot, the gadget, the car, on the website, call center or mobile application.

Within the project development of voice environments for training of voice assistants, collecting of tens of thousands of hours of audio recordings in Russian, English and Chinese for training of neural networks and also development of cross-platform onboard software for start of the platform is planned.

According to RVC, all results of works will be open (Open Source). It is expected that the first project deliverables will be provided to community in the first half of 2020.

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