Krisp

Krisp is a technology company that developing an AI-driven app designed to remove background noise during online communications. The Berkeley, California-based company was founded in October 2017 by Artavazd Minasyan and Davit Baghdasaryan. Its research group is based in Armenia. Baghdasaryan is the company's CEO.

While Krisp is based in the state of California, it was originally founded in Armenia, where both co-founders were born and spent most of their lives. Before Krisp was created, co-founder Davit Baghdasaryan was working at the company Twilio in San Francisco, where he noticed the background noise during his conference calls was disruptive. He mentioned this to his friend and other future co-founder of Krisp, Artavazd Minasyan, who still lived in Armenia. Minasyan began working on a solution with Stepan Sargsyan, who is now Krisp's chief scientist. They produced, in eight months, a prototype of an AI-driven background noise removal software. In 2017, Baghdasaryan moved to Armenia and with Minasyan created 2Hz, the company that would later be known as Krisp.

Krisp began developing its AI technology that detects different background noises by collecting soundbites of 20,000 different noises, 10,000 distinct speakers, and 2,500 hours worth of audio. This information was input into a computer system to create their AI neural network, krispNet DNN. The developed AI system is able to differentiate between human voices and background noises like dogs barking and echoes.

Minasyan and Baghdasaryan originally planned on licensing their AI technology to large companies, such as Skype and WebEx, but they did not have the resources available to connect with them or the necessary funding. The co-founders then changed their business model to suit these restrictions and chose to sell the AI system as their own product instead of as a license. This resulted in the company being branded as Krisp, rather than 2Hz.

The beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in many business shutdowns and stay-at-home orders, which resulted in many workplaces having their employees work remotely. Consequently, various computer and software companies, like Zoom, saw an increase in share prices shortly after this shift. In 2020, Krisp reported a 20X increase of active users, a 23X increase of enterprise accounts, and a 13X increase of its normal annual recurring revenue.

Krisp adjusted software plan prices in light of the pandemic and the country's massive shift to remote work. The company set up a free tier of 120 minutes of calls per week for any user, followed by a 30% discount for continued use on any plan. In addition, the software was made available at no charge to schools, local government workers, and hospital staff.

Krisp is available for Microsoft Windows and MacOS. Krisp is compatible with over 800 voice and video call applications. It had previously been released as a mobile app, but was shut down and removed from app stores on December 26, 2020, with the company citing a need to focus more on the desktop app instead. There was also a Google Chrome extension for Krisp that was removed in November 2020, with the company citing the reason being Chrome's limited performance abilities.

Krisp's software does not automatically download or save any audio and video recordings that occur through the app; this data is saved locally on the user's computer. It does, however, allow you the choice of recording a call and sending it to the other call participants.

In 2021, Krisp is developed a software to change video backgrounds during video calls.

Krisp has been publicly recognized for its work and is mentioned in various business recognition lists. In 2020, Krisp was included in Forbes' AI 50: America's Most Promising Artificial Intelligence, Forbes’ Cloud 100 List, and in TIME's List of The 100 Best Inventions of 2020. In 2018, Krisp was nominated as Product of the Year in the audio and voice category at the Golden Kitty Awards, and was awarded their Oscar of the Tech industry award. In 2021, Krisp won "People's Voice Winner" from the Webby Awards in the Apps and Software, Productivity and Collaboration category.