# Nuance Labs, Inc. (B20250187969)

> Nuance Labs is a Seattle-based AI research lab building a full-duplex audiovisual foundation model for human conversation and expression that understands emotion, tone, and non-verbal cues in real time.

Company page on Leadbay: https://mad-max.leadbay.ai/company/nuancelabs.ai · loaded 2026-11-03

## At a glance

- Website: https://nuancelabs.ai
- Team based in: Seattle (Leadbay's record and 2 more)
- Founded: 2025 (geekwire.com)
- Founders: Fangchang Ma, Edward Zhang
- Industry: Software Development
- Employees: 11 (employees and founders, investors not counted; people named as working there; Sources disagree: 4 (upstartsmedia.com, geekwire.com), 25 (nuancelabs.ai, a company database))
- Total funding: $56.7M (nuancelabs.ai and 1 more)
- Backed by: Lightspeed Venture Partners, Accel, South Park Commons, NVIDIA, Define Ventures, Yaser Sheikh (Advisor)
- Seen in its site's code: Google Analytics (googletagmanager.com/gtag/js), PostHog (i.posthog.com), Framer (framerusercontent.com), Google Workspace (MX smtp.google.com), Mailgun (TXT mailgun.org), Slack (TXT slack-domain-verification) (read 2026-11-03)
- Email: hello@nuancelabs.com
- Address: 1420 5TH AVENUE, SUITE 2200
SEATTLE, WA 98101

## What it sells, to whom

- Nuance Labs is a Seattle-based AI research lab building a full-duplex audiovisual foundation model for human conversation and expression that understands emotion, tone, and non-verbal cues in real time. ([nuancelabs.ai](https://www.nuancelabs.ai/), [nuancelabs.ai](https://www.nuancelabs.ai/nuance-labs-series-a-release))

## Why it stands out

- Featured in headlines regarding $50M Series A funding announcement (September 2026) ([nuancelabs.ai](https://www.nuancelabs.ai/press))
- Competes with: Abridge, Ambience Healthcare, Suki AI, Nabla, Heidi Health, Corti, Tortus AI ([startupfundraising.com](https://startupfundraising.com/ai-medical-scribe-fundraising))

## Products and services

- Full-duplex audiovisual AI foundation model for real-time human interaction ([nuancelabs.ai](https://www.nuancelabs.ai/), [nuancelabs.ai](https://www.nuancelabs.ai/nuance-labs-series-a-release))

## Customers and markets

- **Customers**: Targeted industries include sales, customer service, coaching, professional training, and education ([nuancelabs.ai](https://www.nuancelabs.ai/nuance-labs-series-a-release))
- **Markets**: Sales and customer service ([nuancelabs.ai](https://www.nuancelabs.ai/nuance-labs-series-a-release), [geekwire.com](https://www.geekwire.com/2026/seattles-nuance-labs-raises-50m-to-give-ai-models-human-expression-and-nuance/), [pubt.io](https://pubt.io/view/173A13B28CA21CDACA7115FF16593C4AE9F080B0))
- **Markets**: Professional coaching and training ([nuancelabs.ai](https://www.nuancelabs.ai/nuance-labs-series-a-release), [geekwire.com](https://www.geekwire.com/2026/seattles-nuance-labs-raises-50m-to-give-ai-models-human-expression-and-nuance/), [pubt.io](https://pubt.io/view/173A13B28CA21CDACA7115FF16593C4AE9F080B0))

## Team

- Fangchang Ma, Co-Founder and CEO · [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/fangchang-ma-73644b30)
- Edward Zhang, Co-founder · [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kyzyx)
- Nicole Zhen, Chief of Staff
- Soyong Shin, PhD-ing @ CMU | Visiting Researcher @ Meta FAIR | Guest… · [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/soyong-shin-639403187)
- Elliott Bartsch, Founding Engineer · [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/elliott-bartsch-26786476)
- Karren Yang, ML Research @ Nuance Labs; ex-Apple, MIT PhD · [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/karren-yang-a0278b200)
- Claudia Vanea, Founding Research Scientist @ Nuance Labs | Oxford PhD in AI · [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/claudia-vanea-991813306)
- Avinash Paliwal, Generative AI @ Morphic | CS PhD @ Texas A&M University · [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/avinashpaliwal)
- Shiveesh F. · [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/shiveesh)
- Rajath Kumar, Founding Research Scientist · [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajathkmp)
- Frazer Bayley · [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/frazerbayley)
- Donny Trieu, Founding Recruiter

Backed by: Lightspeed Venture Partners, Accel, South Park Commons, NVIDIA, Define Ventures, Yaser Sheikh

## Where to find more

- [Nuance Labs: Careers](https://www.nuancelabs.ai/careers)
- [Nuance Labs: About](https://www.nuancelabs.ai/about#our-team)
- [This page in Markdown, for agents](https://mad-max.leadbay.ai/company/nuancelabs.ai.md)

## Decision makers

- [Fangchang Ma](https://mad-max.leadbay.ai/person/fangchang-ma--nuancelabs.ai.md), Co-Founder and CEO · [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/fangchang-ma-73644b30)
- [Edward Zhang](https://mad-max.leadbay.ai/person/edward-zhang--nuancelabs.ai.md), Co-founder · [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kyzyx)

Work emails and direct phones come with a Leadbay account: https://wow.leadbay.ai/?register=true

Where it comes from: 9 sites read (nuancelabs.ai, startupfundraising.com, pitchbook.com, sec.gov, emeraldcitywire.com, geekwire.com, definevc.com, upstartsmedia.com, …).

Part of Nuance Labs (nuancelabs.com), which likely buys for it: Its mailbox is on nuancelabs.com; its pages name Nuance Labs.

## Best angle

2026-11-03 · Headcount: Headcount up 400% in a year (1 source)

## Best way in

- LinkedIn message to Fangchang Ma: Co-Founder and CEO · profile linked from the company's record
- LinkedIn message to Edward Zhang: Co-founder · profile linked from the company's record
- Write to hello@nuancelabs.com (generic): A shared mailbox, in Leadbay's record, verified 2026-03-29

## Signals: what happened

- 2026-11-03 · Headcount: Headcount up 400% in a year (1 source: [A company database](https://nuancelabs.ai/))
- 2026-10-01 · Traffic: Site visits up 53% in 3 months, 8,165 a month (1 source: [A company database](https://nuancelabs.ai/))
- 2026-03-01 · Fundraising: Venture · $46.7M (1 source: [A company database](https://nuancelabs.ai/))

## Working on now

- Building a full-duplex human foundation model that sees, hears, reasons, speaks, and expresses in real time (face-to-face AI interaction with emotional intelligence)
- Announced $50M Series A on Sep 14, 2026, led by Lightspeed Venture Partners with participation from Accel, South Park Commons, NVIDIA, and Define Ventures
- Opening a public research preview of its model later in 2026, with a waitlist at nuancelabs.ai/waitlist
- Targeting use cases in sales, customer service, professional coaching, education, and health care (patient-facing AI extenders)
- Hiring researchers and engineers across modeling, data, evaluation, inference, and real-time serving in Seattle
- Yaser Sheikh (former VP of Meta's Codec Avatars, CMU Professor) joined the company as an advisor

From: [nuancelabs.ai](https://www.nuancelabs.ai/), [Nuance Labs: About](https://www.nuancelabs.ai/about), [Nuance Labs Raises $50M Series A to Build the Foundation Model for Human Conversation and Expression](https://www.nuancelabs.ai/nuance-labs-series-a-release), [Nuance Labs: Join the Waitlist](https://www.nuancelabs.ai/waitlist), [Nuance Labs: Careers](https://www.nuancelabs.ai/careers), [Seattle’s Nuance Labs raises $50M to give AI models human expression and nuance](https://www.geekwire.com/2026/seattles-nuance-labs-raises-50m-to-give-ai-models-human-expression-and-nuance/)

## Summary

Nuance Labs is a Seattle-based artificial intelligence research company building a foundation model designed to perceive and respond to human communication in real time [1][2]. The startup develops a full-duplex, multimodal AI that processes and generates text, audio, and visual cues—such as facial expressions, gaze, and tone—simultaneously [1][3]. Founded by former Apple PhD researchers Fangchang Ma, Edward Zhang, and Karren Yang, the company targets applications where natural human expression is critical, including sales, customer service, professional coaching, healthcare, and education [1][2][4]. The company recently raised $50 million in Series A funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from Accel, South Park Commons, NVIDIA, and Define Ventures [1][5]. As of November 2026, Nuance Labs is preparing to release its first public research preview of the model [1][2]. While it intends to offer its technology to other companies via an API for various use cases, the team has historically emphasized a vision for creating intuitive, consumer-facing AI interactions [6][5]. Competitors include other companies developing AI video and avatar solutions, such as Synthesia and HeyGen [6].

[1]: https://www.nuancelabs.ai/nuance-labs-series-a-release "Nuance Labs Raises $50M Series A to Build the Foundation Model for Human Conversation and Expression"
[2]: https://www.geekwire.com/2026/seattles-nuance-labs-raises-50m-to-give-ai-models-human-expression-and-nuance/ "Seattle’s Nuance Labs raises $50M to give AI models human expression and nuance"
[3]: https://www.nuancelabs.ai/ "Human Foundation Model"
[4]: https://www.definevc.com/insights/nuance-labs "Why Define Ventures Backed Nuance Labs' $50M Series A - Define Ventures"
[5]: https://pitchbook.com/profiles/company/734071-69 "Nuance Labs 2026 Company Profile: Valuation, Funding & Investors | PitchBook"
[6]: https://www.upstartsmedia.com/p/nuance-labs-emotional-ai-model "Nuance Labs Raises $10 Million To Build Next-Gen 'Emotional' AI"
[7]: https://www.nuancelabs.ai/about "Nuance Labs: About"
[8]: https://lsvp.com/stories/the-missing-emotional-layer-in-ai-our-investment-in-nuance-labs/ "The Missing Emotional Layer in AI: Our Investment in Nuance Labs - Lightspeed Venture Partners"

## Sources

- [Nuance Labs, Inc. (B20250187969)'s website](https://nuancelabs.ai)
- [Company record, via Exa](https://nuancelabs.ai/)
- [Nuance Labs: Join the Waitlist](https://www.nuancelabs.ai/waitlist)
- [Nuance Labs: Careers](https://www.nuancelabs.ai/careers)
- [Define Ventures Management LLC (via Public) / Building the Face and Presence of Health Care AI with Nuance Labs](https://pubt.io/view/173A13B28CA21CDACA7115FF16593C4AE9F080B0)
- [The foundational challenge in creating compelling digital humans is that people extract an incredible amount of signal from subtle human movement. | Yaser Ajmal Sheikh](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/yaser-sheikh-9847a64_the-foundational-challenge-in-creating-compelling-activity-7384261765414699008-83Qy)