Fast-Talk Communications Receive $ 2 Million of Venture Funding

ATLANTA – September 12, 2000 – Fast-Talk Communications, which has developed the first high-speed audio-voice search engine, announced today that it has received $2 million in venture funding from Miami based H.I.G. Ventures. The company will use the funding to expand its business development activities.

“Fast-Talk is forever changing the value of voice information, and the nature of searching that information” said Bob DeVries, Fast-Talk Communications CEO. “Whether it’s a large broadcast news archive, or hundreds of saved voice messages, with Fast-Talks phonetic voice search technology, you can now search voice even more conveniently than text, because you don’t have to spell a word correctly to find it.” DeVries elaborated, “Even more important, is that you no longer have to use expensive transcription services, or the slow, and highly inaccurate process of automatic speech-to-text conversion to make voice searchable.”

In addition to content management, Fast-Talk’s audio-voice search technology will be a key enabling technology to make desk-top voice messaging, and server-based voice messaging with remote keyword search, as practical, and convenient, as text e-mail messaging. For more information on Fast-Talk, contact Fast-Talk at info@fast-talk.com.

Fast-Talk’s technology was developed at the Georgia Center for Advanced Telecommunications Technology (GCATT), a public/private research consortium. GCATT supports innovative research that leads to new technologies, and it helps commercialize innovations through technology transfer and new high-tech ventures like Fast-Talk. Visit the GCATT web-site at www.gcatt.gatech.edu.

About H.I.G. Ventures

HIG Ventures, based in Miami, Florida, is a venture capital firm investing in early-stage, high-growth technology companies in the communications, Internet, and information technologies sectors. With an investor base including Goldman Sachs, Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette (DLJ), Deutsche Banc Alex. Brown, Wilshire Associates, First Union Corporation, PNC Bank, Teacher’s Insurance and Annuity Associate (TIAA), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Yale University, HIG is currently one of the largest venture capital firms in the Southeast. For more information visit www.hig.com.