Most text-to-speech systems have been judged on one thing: whether the voice sounds human. That matters, but it is less useful to a studio producing an audiobook or a game character, where the voice also has to laugh on cue and slow down when the scene calls for it.
Alibaba's new Qwen-Audio-3.1-TTS is built with that second group in mind. The model turns written text into speech across several languages and Chinese dialects, and it lets users shape the delivery with plain-language instructions. Tone, tempo and speaking style do not require technical parameters. A short description is enough.
Most workplace messaging tools were designed for people typing to other people. AI agents came later and were added as apps. Ando, a startup that came out of stealth on Thursday, wants to reverse that order. It is building a team messaging platform designed for human and AI workers from the start.
The company also said it has raised $20 million in pre-seed and seed funding. Accel, Index Ventures and Emergence are among the investors.
From MCP servers to a messaging platform
The idea came from founder Sara Du's work in 2025, when she was helping companies build MCP servers. Customers kept asking how they could use AI agents inside Slack. The obstacles were technical. Messages had to pass back and forth, agents needed the right context, and all of it had to happen without exhausting token budgets.
Most talk about AI on phones has so far centred on the chatbot: a box you type into, an answer that comes back. That works for looking up facts. It is less useful for someone whose train has been cancelled and who now needs to rebook the journey, move a meeting and tell a friend they will be late.
That is the kind of problem Alibaba is aiming at with Qwen Intelligence. It is not a single app you download. It is a platform that smartphone makers can build into their own system assistants, so its AI functions sit inside the phone rather than on top of it. The stated goals are practical: replanning trips, adjusting appointments and creating images.
Most people who have spoken to ElevenLabs have no idea they did. The company builds models that turn text into speech that sounds human, and much of that speech now reaches the public through customer service lines. Klarna uses it for first-line phone support covering 35 million U.S. customers. Deutsche Telekom, Cisco, Adobe and a growing number of governments are also customers. A separate part of the business serves creators, who use the platform for audiobooks, dubbing and music.
The company is four years old. It says it is pacing at $600 million in annual recurring revenue, and its backers reportedly value it at $22 billion. In a short on-stage interview with TechCrunch at Nrth, a Toronto entrepreneurship conference formerly called Elevate, co-founder and CEO Mati Staniszewski covered competition, model choice, disclosure and money.
Voice assistants have mostly been good at conversation: ask a question, get an answer, move on. That works for looking something up. It is less useful for someone who wants to check their calendar and then act on what they find.
OpenAI is now trying to close that gap. In an announcement on X, the company said ChatGPT Voice can do more than respond. Spoken requests can now reach connected services and start work inside ChatGPT Work, the company's environment for producing documents and handling longer tasks.
Plugins bring connected services into the conversation
The main change is plugin support. ChatGPT Voice now works with plugins for email, calendar and Slack, so users can bring those connected services into a spoken conversation rather than switching to a keyboard.
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