About Murmel

Why Murmel exists

In early 2026 I compared the well-known open-source speech models on Dutch audio from debates in the Dutch House of Representatives. None of them was really good at Dutch. Large multilingual models have to handle dozens of languages at once, and that breadth comes at the cost of depth: accents, dialects and jargon are recognised less well.

So I decided to train a Dutch model myself. I called it Murmel, after the Dutch word murmelen (to mumble): the goal is to understand even people who mumble. The start is described in the first announcement.

A model of its own, trained from scratch

Murmel runs on murmel-flash, a compact architecture of its own trained from scratch on Dutch speech, with English as a second language. It is not an adapted version of an existing model. That lets me shape it around what Dutch users actually say: names, informal speech and regional accents. The current version is v5, released in October 2026.

How I measure it and how it compares to other models is in the Murmel v5 benchmark and in how Murmel is measured.

Where your audio is processed

• Compute: at Leafcloud in Amsterdam, on GPU servers whose waste heat is used to heat water and buildings.
• Storage: at Scaleway in the Netherlands.
• Payments: via Mollie, also in the Netherlands.
• No training without consent: recordings and transcripts are not used to train the model unless you choose to allow it.
• You decide the retention period: recordings stay until you delete them, or you turn on automatic deletion.

More details in security and privacy and the privacy policy. Want to run the models in your own environment? Read Murmel on your own servers.

Who builds Murmel

Murmel is a product of The AI Factory B.V., an Amsterdam company that builds AI applications for Dutch organisations. I train the models and build the app. Questions, requests and bug reports come in through the contact form.

In the media

• BNR Nieuwsradio, May 2026. In the Tech & Innovatie programme, on why a Dutch speech model works better than the models of large international tech companies. Read more or listen on BNR (Dutch).
• De Telegraaf, July 2026. An interview in the financial section under the headline "Ondernemer bouwt Nederlandse AI-tegenhanger: niet praten maar doen" (entrepreneur builds Dutch AI alternative: building instead of talking). Read more or read the article (Dutch).
• Tech Sovereignty Catalogue, May 2026. Murmel is listed in this register of the European DIGITAL SME Alliance, covering digital solutions that contribute to Europe's technological independence. Read more.

What users think of it is on Trustpilot.

Company details

Frequently asked questions