AI Tech Consulting Firm Quansight Acquires Cobalt Speech and Language
On May 6, 2025, open source technology consulting firm Quansight announced that it had acquired Cobalt Speech and Language, a provider of automatic speech recognition (ASR), transcription , natural language understanding, and other voice technologies in multiple languages. The deal closed April 10, 2025. According to Quansight CEO Travis Oliphant, the purchase was for cash, earn-out, and equity in Quansight portfolio companies. “Quansight builds AI systems and has key developers who know how to build the tools behind AI ( PyTorch , JAX , Tensorflow , and NumPy),” Oliphant told Slator. “Cobalt builds language systems that use these tools.” Oliphant said that Quansight decided to acquire Cobalt, rather than build its own speech technologies in-house, based on the strength of Cobalt’s team, which could help maintain a certain speed of development. Of course, he acknowledged that the prospect of acquiring Cobalt’s customers w...