Deepgram, the real-time API platform targeting the Voice AI economy, has raised $130 million in Series C funding at a $1.3 billion valuation. The round was led by AVP, an independent global investment platform dedicated to high-growth technology companies across Europe and North America.
All major existing investors joined the round, including Alkeon, In-Q-Tel, Madrona, Tiger, Wing, Y Combinator, and funds and accounts managed by BlackRock. Several new investors, including Alumni Ventures and Princeville Capital, invested in the round, in addition to Twilio, ServiceNow Ventures, SAP, and Citi Ventures. University of Michigan and Columbia University also invested, joining other existing academic investors such as Stanford University.
“Much like Stripe delivered the API platform underpinning the payments economy, we believe Deepgram is poised to deliver the API platform underpinning the emerging trillion-dollar B2B Voice AI economy,” said Elizabeth de Saint-Aignan, general partner at AVP. “Deepgram’s success in building real-time, reliable, and massively scalable Voice AI infrastructure, combined with the rapid shift toward voice-first B2B experiences, positions the company to become one of the foundational AI companies of this decade.”
“As we rapidly approach a world where billions of simultaneous conversations are powered by Voice AI, enterprises and developers need real-time, reliable infrastructure capable of fully duplex, contextual conversations at scale – this is Deepgram,” said Scott Stephenson, CEO and co-founder of Deepgram. “From pioneering end-to-end deep learning for voice, to earning multiple patents for our research, to our commitment to pass the Audio Turing Test at scale in 2026, we’ve consistently executed on a single vision: powering a future centered on the original human interface – voice.
“We are pleased to welcome AVP and our new strategic investors. Together with our existing investors, their conviction reflects the emergence of the Voice AI economy – and Deepgram’s role in powering it.”
Powered by Deepgram
Today, more than 1,300 organizations build Voice AI functionality powered by Deepgram APIs. Deepgram APIs are a foundational infrastructure layer of a global set of offerings delivering real-time, accurate, and reliable speech understanding, speech generation, analytics, orchestration, and fully autonomous voice agents.
Deepgram’s industry-leading offerings include:
- Aura-2, an enterprise-grade text-to-speech model
- Nova-3, a speech-to-text model
- Flux, a Conversational Speech Recognition model built specifically to solve interruptions
- Voice Agent API, an enterprise-ready, real-time, conversational AI API
- Saga, the Voice OS
All Deepgram models can be customized to domain-specific terminology and acoustic environments and deployed as cloud APIs or through self-hosted and on-premises options. A full SDK library is available to simplify development and accelerate production timelines.
Deepgram acquires OfOne to expand real-time voice automation into restaurants
Deepgram also announced today the acquisition of OfOne, an AI-native voice platform created for restaurants and the quick-service drive-thru market. OfOne has consistently delivered more than 95% containment, with high employee satisfaction scores and strong operational impact for national QSR brands.
“We are incredibly proud to join the Deepgram team. Deepgram has built the most advanced real-time voice platform in the world, and it is the perfect foundation for scaling what we started at OfOne,” said Will Edwards, GM of Deepgram for Restaurants (formerly CEO at OfOne). “The impact of AI for restaurants and drive-thrus is enormous, and together we can deliver on that opportunity with the accuracy, speed, and reliability operators need at international scale.”
New Voice AI Collaboration Hub in San Francisco
Deepgram is opening a new Voice AI Collaboration Hub in San Francisco to bring the voice AI community together in person. Designed for meaningful collaboration with customers, partners, and builders, the space will host hands-on working sessions, live demonstrations, executive briefings, community meetups, and developer hackathons – creating a shared environment where ideas turn into products and the future of Voice AI is built together.
