Hume AI has announced the appointment of Andrew Ettinger as Chief Executive Officer as the company expands its role as a research infrastructure provider for voice-based AI. Ettinger brings more than 15 years of experience in data and AI infrastructure, having led teams responsible for over $2 billion in annual recurring revenue across Pivotal, Astronomer, and Appen.
Most recently, he served as Chief Revenue Officer at Appen, overseeing commercial operations that supplied hyperscalers and AI labs with proprietary datasets and evaluation software. Commenting on his new role, Ettinger said, “Voice in AI is evolving from a feature to the primary interface for the next generation of applications and devices,” adding that understanding emotion will be critical to advancing AI systems.
Alongside the leadership change, Hume agreed to non-exclusive technology licensing arrangements with Google, while Co-Founder Alan Cowen has joined Google. Cowen said, “Hume’s infrastructure—built around emotionally grounded data, evaluation, and reinforcement learning—is exactly what frontier labs and enterprises need as voice becomes the primary interface for AI.” Hume has recently expanded access to its research platform, including voice evaluation tools, data pipelines, and a reinforcement-learning “voice gym,” and plans to release new text-to-speech and speech-to-speech models soon.