The ‘Grammarly for Spanish’ Correcto grabs $7M Seed Funding

The Madrid-based language writing tool for Spanish speakers announces $7 million in seed funding.  The boom of generative AI in contemporary society has cracked Correcto’s $7 million seed funding deal led by the London-based Octopus Ventures along with Carya Venture Partners. The Correcto team first started working on the idea of the Grammarly-styled auto-editing tools focused on rectifying Spanish writing errors back in 2021, before generative AI tools like ChatGPT grabbed global attention.

In the early testing of Correcto, the target focus of the application was to correct the grammar and style of the language. Correcto was powered by rules-based natural language processing and a proprietary database of Spanish phrases. The app was first launched as a Chrome extension to test demand, but later the app came up with a freemium web app. According to the company statistics, they have experienced 1,20,000 downloads and have 70,000 active users to date. 

A particular threat to Correcto is the freely available AI-generative tools like Large Language Models (LLM) and Anthropic’s Claude, which are capable of writing any written text, including Spanish. This ignites questions to be raised about the necessity of Correcto.

But the suspicion was quickly faded by Lopez Lee. AI-written Spanish sounds like how a child would write in Spanish, according to native speakers. Therefore, it is not suitable for professional outlets, which are the target audience of Correcto. On the other hand, the application works to provide users with augmented intelligence rather than artificial intelligence to keep users actively in the loop. 

Correcto leverages the development of mainstream generative AI to offer an advanced auto-editing tool for Spanish. Similar to OpenAI’s API, Correcto has added a quasi-generative writing feature called “Write for Me”. This helps users create appropriate pieces of writing in Spanish by assisting them in grammar and syntax correction, along with framing marked content in the voice the user desires. 

The company finds Correcto’s opportunity in Latin America with Spanish natives who are not connected to their roots and might not be confident in their language. The top five countries currently using Correcto are Colombia, Mexico, Argentina, Spain, and the U.S.

For the long term, the company suggests that Coorecto holds the possibility of a strategic exit from one of the AI giants. This possibility has also motivated the team to create a new compelling product for the future.

In terms of competition, a Spanish startup called Cilbrian focuses on using AI to serve Spanish speakers. Lopez Lee argues for having distinct user cases. Cilbrian aims to create its own Spanish language-tuned LLM to sell API access to all. While Correcto is  “much more focused on productizing our Large Language Model fine tunes and selling that to companies in the form of a product, not in an API”. He also sparked the possibility of the two working together in the future. 

The company has also previously raised $1 million in seed funding. The increase in seed funding this year will be utilized in the advancement research and development of Correcto’s product on the basis of setting style and other differentiating edges.