Promptu, the Menlo Park company that uses speech recognition to let you search on a mobile phone, has raised $5.6 million in additional financing.
Voice-powered search is an increasingly competitive field, especially in the hot area of mobile. Google last year filed a patent for voice search, and other players include V-Enable and Tellme. Tellme just launched a free mobile search feature.
This is second part of Promptu’s third round of financing. Founded in 2002, it transitioned last year to focus on wireless voice search. It raised $11.6 million at that time. It has now raised a total of $74 million.
Notably, the company did not get a new outside investor to lead the financing round, a practice that is considered prudent, because it validates the value of a company and brings in new blood to help expand the company’s network of contacts.
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Existing investors Steelpoint Capital, LP, Lauder Partners, and other private investors returned for the round, the company said.
(This story originally posted 2/9)
