Alexandre de Brébisson

Yo, have you heard of Alexandre de Brébisson? This guy’s the real deal in AI and speech tech. Dude’s a YC alum from S17, that’s Summer 2017, so he’s been in the game for a minute.

So, here’s the scoop: he co-founded Lyrebird, which was this Montreal startup crushing voice cloning and speech synthesis. Think super realistic AI voices, like, you can make a computer talk just like a person. Lyrebird was so hot, YC scooped them up, and later, Descript bought it. That’s some serious validation, no cap.

But before all that, Alexandre was deep in the research trenches. He was a PhD student at MILA, the Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms, basically the AI hub of the world. He was under the wing of legends like Yoshua Bengio and Pascal Vincent, working on neural nets and machine learning. Basically, he was rubbing elbows with the best and learning from the top minds in AI.

His academic background? Studied at Imperial College London, where he teamed up with heavy hitters like Murray Shanahan, Giovanni Montana, and Mauricio Barahona. The guy’s been around the block, soaking up knowledge in neural networks, speech tech, and AI ethics. He’s not just about tech for tech’s sake, he genuinely cares about what AI means for society, and that’s what sets him apart.

From what I gather, Alexandre’s motivation is all about pushing the boundaries of what AI can do with voices, but also making sure it’s responsible. He’s an early pioneer who jumped into neural nets before it was trendy, contributed to open-source projects, and worked on modern speech tech. That kind of hustle shows he’s not in it for a quick buck, he genuinely wants to change how we interact with machines and voice.

And his process? It’s all about curiosity, pushing limits, and then turning that knowledge into real-world shit that actually works. Starting Lyrebird wasn’t just a side project, it was about solving a problem he saw firsthand: how to make AI voices sound real without bullshit. And he crushed it, leading the company from research to acquisition. That’s the kind of entrepreneur who turns passion into impact.

In short, Alexandre de Brébisson is one of those guys who’s been deep in AI for years, not just chasing hype, but genuinely shaping the future of voice tech. He’s a perfect example of someone who took his academic smarts, his research hustle, and turned it into something real that’s changing how we talk to computers. No Cap, he’s one of the key players in this space right now.