Gradium, a Paris-based startup that offers voice AI models, has reopened its seed round to new investors including Nvidia, and has now raised a total of $100 million for this round. Said on Thursday.
The company is using the cash to open an office in the Bay Area and compete for talent there, “solidifying its position at the center of the world’s leading AI ecosystem,” as Gradium put it. Paris is a major European hub for AI, so this is an interesting acknowledgment of the benefits for AI startups in being close to Anthropic, Google, Meta, and OpenAI.
Gradium originally launched secretly in December with $70 million from influential investors including FirstMark Capital, Eurazeo, DST Global Partners, Eric Schmidt and French telecom billionaire Xavier Niel.
Startup turned around French AI lab out of Qitai (A laboratory supported by Neil). Both Qitai and Gradium were co-founded by Neil Zgidor, a researcher who previously worked at Google Brain, DeepMind, and Facebook.
Gradium is working on audio models that deliver voice at scale with ultra-low latency, meaning AI voices that respond almost instantly, without the awkward lag that often creeps into AI agent conversations.
However, the company faces a lot of competition from other voice AI startups such as ElevenLabs. value 11 billion dollars In February, for major model makers known for their sound like Google’s Gemini. But Gradium seems to be winning anyway. Since launching in December, Gradium says it has landed some big customers, including French auto makers Renault.
