Business

Luke Miner and Jessica Powell, AudioShake

AudioShake is a San Francisco startup that uses AI to separate any audio recording into its individual components. The company was launched in 2021, but as co-founder Jessica Powell recounts, the seeds of the idea were sown years before in Tokyo. Powell and Luke Miner, who were working at a nonprofit in the city, both shared a love of karaoke, and wondered if it would be possible to remove the vocals so they could just sing along to the backing track.

Years later, and back in San Francisco, Miner was data science lead at Plaid, a US fintech company, when he told Powell, who was a Google VP, that deep learning had finally gotten good enough to make “that Tokyo idea” work.