When voice AI exploded in the 2010s, every system shared the same blind spot. They were all designed for adults. Children speak differently: higher pitched, with different vocabulary, with distinctive pauses. Hand a child Alexa or Siri and ask them to read a book aloud, and the system will misunderstand half of it.
Spotting that gap took the attention of a Bell Labs researcher. Her name was Dr. Patricia Scanlon. And in 2013, she founded SoapBox Labs in Dublin.
A Dublin Voice AI Discovery
After leaving Bell Labs and returning to Dublin, Patricia Scanlon brought back a PhD in speech recognition and machine learning, and something more important: an insight. Building voice technology for children was not a matter of “tweaking” the adult systems already on the market. It was something that had to be built from scratch.
That is exactly what SoapBox Labs did. The company built a voice engine trained on the speech of children aged 2 to 12, with no parallel anywhere else in the industry. It was licensed for educational apps, toys, and language-learning platforms. In 2021, the company closed a Series A (early-stage growth funding) round at $6.5M. In July 2023, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provided a grant to build a Spanish-language voice engine.
Over a decade, a quiet company in Dublin became a global reference.
Why Dublin?
For SoapBox Labs, Dublin was never just a place of incorporation. It was the company’s DNA. Speech-processing and AI programs at universities such as UCD and Trinity College made it possible for founders like Patricia to build the technical team locally. Government support for the education technology sector, through Enterprise Ireland and IDA Ireland, helped the company scale through its early years.
But the real surprise of the story arrived in 2023.
When the US Came Calling: The Acquisition
In November 2023, the US edtech (education technology) leader Curriculum Associates announced its acquisition of SoapBox Labs. The usual edtech-acquisition pattern looks like this: a smaller company is bought, the technology is extracted, the Dublin operation is closed or shrunk, and the team’s core moves to the US.
Here, the opposite happened.
Curriculum Associates positioned SoapBox Labs as its global AI innovation hub. The Dublin operation was not closed; it was given new resources. Patricia Scanlon stayed in leadership.
Recent Milestones
August 2025: Official Rebrand to AI Labs Curriculum Associates. As the SoapBox Labs name moved into history, the company was formally renamed AI Labs Curriculum Associates and positioned as Curriculum Associates’ internal AI incubator. The global AI innovation team is now consolidated in Dublin.
A New Dublin Office on Hume Street. The company opened its new Dublin office in 2025: a larger team, a broader mission, the same city.
April 2025: Responsibly Designed AI Certification. The SoapBox technology earned Digital Promise’s Responsibly Designed AI Product Certification, considered the gold standard for ethical AI in education technology.
Integration with i-Ready. The SoapBox voice engine is now integrated with i-Ready, Curriculum Associates’ flagship learning platform. As children read aloud, the AI listens and provides real-time feedback on pronunciation, fluency, and accuracy. The integration brings Dublin-built technology into millions of classrooms worldwide.
Patricia Scanlon: Chair of Ireland’s AI Council and First AI Ambassador. In 2022, the Irish Government appointed Patricia Scanlon as Ireland’s first AI Ambassador. Today, she also serves as Chair of Ireland’s AI Council. The two roles together signal both the recognition of her technical legacy and the depth of her anchoring in the Dublin AI ecosystem.
What’s Next
The roadmap for AI Labs Curriculum Associates moves along four lines. Voice AI is being deepened across the Curriculum Associates product family, beyond i-Ready alone. Responsible AI design is being pushed as a sector standard. Dublin’s AI talent base is growing through new hires and partnerships. And Patricia Scanlon is steering a global AI innovation culture, all from Dublin.
What This Means for Dublin AI
The story of SoapBox Labs may be the strongest single case AI Dubliners can point to. When Dublin AI is acquired, it doesn’t always dissolve. Sometimes, it multiplies. The path from Dublin to global isn’t always one of relocation. Sometimes the city becomes the buyer’s global engine.
What Patricia Scanlon started in Dublin a decade ago is, today, the technology behind millions of children learning to read. And the heart of that technology still beats in Dublin.
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