Pullstring

PullString began life in May 2011 as ToyTalk, founded in San Francisco by Oren Jacob and Martin Reddy, two veteran Pixar Animation Studios technologists (Jacob rose to a senior technology leadership role at Pixar, credited by multiple outlets as the studio's CTO and by Crunchbase as Director of Tools; he worked on Toy Story 2, A Bug's Life, Finding Nemo, and other films; Reddy, who holds a BSc in Computer Science from the University of Strathclyde and a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Edinburgh, worked at Pixar on Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Cars, Ratatouille, and WALL-E, and earlier at SRI International -- the lab whose spinout technology underpinned Apple's Siri). Crunchbase also lists a third founder, Renee Adams. Jacob served as an Entrepreneur in Residence at August Capital just before founding the company and was CEO throughout ToyTalk/PullString's independent life; Reddy served as CTO.

ToyTalk's original mission was to build a new generation of entertainment experiences for children that could hold natural, two-way spoken conversations -- starting with an interactive plush bear demo and consumer apps such as SpeakaZoo and The Winston Show. The company raised early capital from True Ventures (~$4.2-4.5M, believed to be an initial/seed round in 2011), then a $11.5 million round announced in November 2012 led by Charles River Ventures (CRV), with True Ventures, First Round Capital, and Greylock Partners participating -- bringing total funding to roughly $16 million at that point. In December 2014, ToyTalk raised a $15 million Series C led by Khosla Ventures, bringing total funding to $31.2 million by mid-2015.

ToyTalk's most famous product was Hello Barbie, developed in partnership with Mattel: a Wi-Fi-connected doll that used ToyTalk's cloud-based speech recognition and scripted-AI conversation engine to let children have back-and-forth conversations with Barbie. Hello Barbie was unveiled in early 2015 and generated significant media attention and controversy over children's privacy and device security, with critics (child-advocacy groups and security researchers) raising concerns about a toy that recorded and transmitted children's voices to the cloud; ToyTalk publicly defended the product's security and COPPA/kidSAFE compliance. In parallel, ToyTalk also partnered with Mattel on a "Thomas & Friends Talk to You" app (launched July 2015) and, at Toy Fair 2016, on a connected Hello Barbie Dreamhouse and smart accessories.

Business model

B2B software platform (SaaS) and, earlier in its history, B2B2C licensing of conversational AI technology to toy/entertainment partners (e.g., Mattel) plus direct-to-consumer children's apps.

Originally: consumer app sales/IAP (ToyTalk apps) plus licensing fees/royalties from toy partners (Mattel) for embedding its conversational AI in connected toys. After the 2016 rebrand to PullString: enterprise SaaS subscription/licensing for its authoring and hosted AI runtime platform (PullString Platform / PullString Converse) sold to brands and agencies building voice apps and chatbots.