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How A.I. Broke the Sound Barrier

Over the past half-decade, Nagish has emerged as one of the more promising companies harnessing A.I. to help hearing-impaired people with speech-to-text—and soon, real-time sign language translation.

asl interpreter
Nagish has raised a total of $20 million, which helped support its recent acquisition of Sign.mt, a company that offers A.I.-powered sign language translation. Photo: Jeff Kowalsky/AFP/Getty Images
Ian Krietzberg
November 25, 2025

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Six years ago, Tomer Aharoni was studying computer science at Columbia when he got a phone call during class. Of course, he couldn’t answer the call, which got him thinking: How would it be possible to take a call if you couldn’t speak or hear? He mentioned this quandary to a classmate, Alon Ezer, who wondered how deaf people dealt with the situation. Surely there was some technological solution for them to take phone calls, right?