Vlingo Secures $20 Million including Yahoo! Investment, for Mobile Voice Interface

Vlingo, a start-up based in Cambridge, Mass., secured $20 million in Series B financing for its voice-recognition technology. The funding round was led by Yahoo!, which just announced a voice-enabled version of Yahoo! oneSearch that leverages Vlingo’s technology. Additional investors include Charles River Ventures and Sigma Partners.

The voice-enabled version of Yahoo! oneSearch supports unstructured, open-ended voice searches that allows the consumer to speak their query as they would type it into the search box.

Vlingo launched a beta version of its voice-powered interface in August 2007. Its first beta application enables users to look up any local establishment with the power of their voices while on-the-go without having to use constrained language choices.http://www.vlingo.com

• Vlingo was founded by Mike Phillips (a co-founder of SpeechWorks, now Nuance) and John Nguyen, and funded by Charles River Ventures and Sigma Partners. In April, the company recruited mobile industry veteran Dave Grannan, most recently a general manager at Nokia, the world’s largest mobile phone company, as CEO.