Papercup

Papercup Technologies Limited was founded in London in 2017 by Jesse Shemen and Jiameng Gao out of Entrepreneur First. Its software transcribed video, translated the speech and generated a synthetic voice track checked by human reviewers, and it dubbed content for Sky News, Bloomberg, Discovery and Business Insider. It raised about $30.5M in total, including a $20M Series A in June 2022 led by Octopus Ventures with LocalGlobe, Sands Capital, Sky, Guardian Media Ventures, Entrepreneur First and BDMI. As large AI labs released cheaper speech models the standalone business lost its edge. In June 2025 most of the team, including the chief executive, joined Scale AI and listed language-services group RWS bought Papercup's intellectual property for an undisclosed sum. On 10 July 2025 shareholders resolved to wind the company up and FRP Advisory were appointed liquidators.

Intellectual property acquired by RWS (announced 26 June 2025, price undisclosed) and most staff acqui-hired by Scale AI; the company then entered voluntary liquidation on 10 July 2025 with FRP Advisory as liquidators, and the papercup.com domain now redirects to RWS.

A narrow AI application built on proprietary speech models was overtaken within three years by general-purpose models from far better-funded labs. The founders salvaged value through an acqui-hire and an IP sale rather than a down round, but equity holders were left with a liquidation.