Vu Van

In 2015, Stanford alum Vu Van and Dr. Xavier Anguera, a veteran in speech recognition and AI, founded the startup ELSA (English Language Speech Assistant). The app, which is called ELSA Speak, listens to the way language learners pronounce words, sentences, or conversations to pinpoint exact errors and provide real-time, accurate feedback on their pronunciation mistakes with specific suggestions on how to improve. ELSA Speak is available for iOS and Android and is used by more than 13 million users in over 100 countries.