In the past two years, we’ve seen the industry discovery of speech as a critical interface protocol between humans and machines, especially for cloud-based information queries driving by speech recognition. However, speech recognition is just the tip of the iceberg for cloud-based speech. A whole new set of basic functions - speech enhancement, speaker identification and authentication, background noise classification - are becoming available. These create significant new opportunities for every application that touches audio or video - opening up new potential for improved intelligibility, personalisation and customer “stickiness”. We use BabbleLabs Clear Cloud as an example of breakthrough deep learning technology applied to widely-applicable speech APIs, give a sense of the future roadmap of speech-centric applications.