Reson8, an Amsterdam-based speech AI startup building hyper-customised automatic speech recognition (ASR), today announced it has raised a €5 million pre-Seed round to scale its Europe-based infrastructure and expand specialised speech models across 20+ languages
The round was led by Balderton Capital, with participation from NP Hard. With this capital, the company aims to broaden its European hardware presence, continue developing its inference stack and foundational speech models, and selectively grow the team, prioritising talent density over headcount.
“Generic speech models break the moment you leave English, and customers increasingly want control over where their data lives. We feel strongly that Europe doesn’t need to be a fast follower in foundational AI. Instead, we can build the speech layer Europe can rely on: deeply customisable, engineered for accuracy, and run on infrastructure we own,” said Raoul Ritter, co-founder of Reson8.
Founded by Thomas Kluiters, Raoul Ritter, and Jarno Verhagen, Reson8 is a European speech technology company building hyper-customised speech recognition that adapts to each conversation in seconds. The company states that its platform allows businesses to deploy specialised speech models with higher accuracy across European languages and industries.
According to the Dutch startup, although English speech recognition is commonly seen as solved, its effectiveness declines significantly with European languages, dialects, and industry-specific terms. This leads teams to depend on manual corrections or broad models that guess instead of accurately listening.
Reson8 claims to bridge the gap between expectation and performance with its new speech AI approach, developing acoustically accurate models that can be customised in real-time using live context like documents, websites, and calendars.
Instead of retraining large models or layering language models on top, Reson8 states that it uses small, pluggable adapters that tailor speech recognition to each conversation’s specific context, enhancing accuracy without increasing latency or guesswork.
“Reson8 is built on the belief that speech recognition should adapt to people, rather than forcing users to adapt to software. Instead of optimising for broad, average performance, the company prioritises acoustic precision and control, allowing its models to reflect how language is actually spoken in real settings,” explained the company.
The company notes that this speech recognition system manages specialist terminology, names, and fast-paced dialogue more smoothly, and can be quickly customised for different professions, organisations or individual conversations.
In healthcare, its ASR can recognise drug names, clinical shorthand, and terminology across all specialties. In the legal sector, it adapts to firm-specific language, contractual terms, and jurisdiction-specific vocabulary. For customer support, it adjusts to product names, technical terms, and brand-specific language that characterise each interaction.
Reson8 positions itself as a European-built alternative to US-centric speech providers. The startup emphasises that it is building and operating its own European infrastructure, unlike many speech providers that rely on US hyperscalers. This strategy grants customers complete ownership of the full stack, ensures clear data residency, and provides a competitive edge as regulation and procurement standards favour AI hosted in Europe.
At launch, Reson8 will include support for more than 20 European languages, addressing a persistent quality gap in non-English speech recognition.
Read the orginal article: https://www.eu-startups.com/2026/03/amsterdams-reson8-raises-e5-million-to-build-speech-ai-infrastructure-that-resonates-across-europe/
