Dropbox Acquires Umano

On May 12th, 2015, Dropbox acquired Umano, a startup that provides voice actors who read content that can be recorded and added to content on websites and applications. Umano announced the news via blog post. “We’re thrilled to announce that the Umano team has joined Dropbox! Nearly three years ago, we had a vision to make content more accessible on mobile. Since then, we’ve helped millions of people become more knowledgeable and productive in today’s rapidly evolving world,” the startup wrote.

However, the service is shutting down. “Umano will continue running for the next 30 days until June 12th, 2015,” said the blog post. “All annual and Premium subscribers have those 30 days to request a refund for the remainder of their subscriptions here.” No financial terms of the acquisition have been disclosed.

Before its acquisition by Dropbox, Umano narrated articles pertaining to business, entertainment, health & fitness, news, science, sports, and “for women”. The app would also allow writers to narrate their own content, access analytic tools, earn money, and track engagement. With Umano’s shutdown it is unclear how Dropbox intends to integrate the company’s services with their own.

It hasn’t been revealed how many members of the Umano team will be joining Dropbox, if the technology is going to be used by Dropbox, or what the team will be working on as a result of this acquisition. When Umano first announced that the company was shutting down they didn’t mention having been acquired by Dropbox – that announcement didn’t come until later in the day.

Dropbox, it seems, has been on an acquisition mission in recent years (this is the third of 2015) since the company has already acquired CloudOn, Pixelapse, and Predicitive Edge. Dropbox is staying pretty tight-lipped about the whole thing as no further details have been released on their end either.