{"id":28629,"date":"2026-01-30T06:33:31","date_gmt":"2026-01-30T06:33:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/?p=28629"},"modified":"2026-01-30T06:33:34","modified_gmt":"2026-01-30T06:33:34","slug":"uplift-ai-raises-3-5mn-in-seed-funding-eyes-thousands-of-jobs-in-pakistan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/?p=28629","title":{"rendered":"Uplift AI raises $3.5mn in seed funding, eyes thousands of jobs in Pakistan"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong><em>Startup is founded by Zaid Qureshi and Hammad Malik, former Apple and Amazon engineers<\/em><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/youtube.com\/channel\/UCFWx0mweS7ExXjs3s_wH0CQ\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/BusinessRecorder\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/businessrecorder\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/brecordernews\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.brecorder.com\/feeds\/latest-news\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><\/a><strong>Uplift AI, a Pakistani voice AI startup, has secured $3.5 million in funding led by Y Combinator, an accelerator behind Airbnb, Dropbox, and GitLab, alongside Indus Valley Capital, Pakistan\u2019s leading early-stage venture fund.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>According to a statement, the funding round also saw participation from Pioneer Fund, Conjunction, Moment Ventures and angel investors from Silicon Valley.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"201\" height=\"251\" src=\"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/image-101.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-28631\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Founded by Zaid Qureshi and Hammad Malik, former Apple and Amazon engineers, Uplift AI develops voice AI models for regional languages like Urdu, Punjabi, and Balochi \u2014 so people can use technology by just speaking in their local language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The startup flagship model, Orator, speaks Urdu with human-like realism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The company shared that the startup is gaining traction among developers and small businesses, with 1,000+ developers building with their APIs \u2014 from students creating FIR registration bots to entrepreneurs building health intake systems for rural clinics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The startup believes that voice-first technology is key for Pakistan, where 42% of adults cannot read, which holds back the country economically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cVoice technology has the potential to uplift our entire GDP by giving everyone access to knowledge and opportunity. We founded Uplift AI to make this happen now, rather than in the distant future,\u201d said Hammad Malik, CEO, Uplift AI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"290\" height=\"174\" src=\"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/image-102.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-28632\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Backing the startup, Aatif Awan, Partner at Indus Valley Capital, believes that voice is the primary gateway to the digital economy in emerging markets. \u201cBuilt by former Apple and Amazon engineers, Uplift AI is delivering the foundational voice AI infrastructure to unlock this massive opportunity.\u201c<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For the industries serving mass markets \u2014 banking, healthcare, agriculture, government \u2014 voice-first technology will unlock a market that text-based solutions cannot address.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIn Pakistan, agriculture doesn\u2019t lack effort \u2014 it lacks accessible intelligence. Uplift AI\u2019s voice technology lets us deliver that intelligence to farmers in their own language at scale. This has enabled us to lead the market in helping farmers increase yield by adopting AI,\u201d said Sultan Raja, Head of AI Transformation, Syngenta Pakistan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Zaid Qureshi, CTO of Uplift AI, says that the startup built everything in-house, from data gathering, labelling, and training, because off-the-shelf solutions always compromise on regional languages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cOur approach is paying off \u2014 it\u2019s heartening to get emails from customers telling us they find our model quality to be better than OpenAI and Google for these languages,\u201c he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>With this funding, Uplift AI plans to bring voice-first technology to every language in Pakistan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While the company sees itself as a global player specialising in voice technology for small regional languages, \u201cin the short to medium term, Pakistan will remain our only focus,\u201d Aatif told&nbsp;<em>Business Recorder<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Hammad Malik, CEO of Uplift AI, said that around $1 million will be utilised on data gathering and labelling, which is expected to create thousands of jobs in Pakistan. \u201cThe rest will be used to do R&amp;D to develop state-of-the-art speech understanding and speech generation models for the five major Pakistani languages.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Hammad shared that Uplift AI is not yet engaging with government departments but noted that its platform is already accessible to startups and small businesses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cOver 1,000 developers already use our API. Any startup or small business can sign up and start using our API right now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Reference Link:- <a href=\"https:\/\/www.brecorder.com\/news\/40404485\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/www.brecorder.com\/news\/40404485<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Uplift AI, a Pakistani voice AI startup, has secured $3.5 million in funding led by Y Combinator, an accelerator behind Airbnb, Dropbox, and GitLab, alongside Indus Valley Capital, Pakistan\u2019s leading early-stage venture fund. According to a statement, the funding round also saw participation from Pioneer Fund, Conjunction, Moment Ventures and angel investors from Silicon Valley. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28630,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"aside","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-aside","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sample-category","post_format-post-format-aside"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28629"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28629\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28633,"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28629\/revisions\/28633"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}