The archive · AI & Models · Product decision · 2025–2026
Gradium: Kyutai spinout bets voice is AI's next interface, raises $100M seed
Founded in September 2025, Gradium turns open-source voice research into ultra-low-latency audio models; a $70M seed grew to $100M with Nvidia.
Gradium
What the business is
Sells 'audio language models' that turn LLMs into interactive AI voices with near-instant response, in English, French, German, Spanish and Portuguese.
Starting capital：$70M seed led by FirstMark and Eurazeo; later reopened to Nvidia, $100M total
How it started
Kyutai, the Paris non-profit AI lab launched in 2023 with €300M from Xavier Niel, Rodolphe Saadé and Eric Schmidt, released open-source voice models for dialogue, transcription and translation and saw heavy commercial uptake — but users could not bring them to production quality. In September 2025, cofounder Neil Zeghidour and Kyutai scientists Laurent Mazaré and Alexandre Défossez, plus ex-Google engineer Olivier Teboul, founded Gradium to commercialise the work.
What happened
In December 2025 Gradium came out of stealth with a $70M all-equity seed led by FirstMark Capital and Eurazeo, joined by DST Global, Korelya Capital, Amplify Partners, Niel, Saadé and Eric Schmidt. Within three months it had a dozen paying customers using its voices in video-game characters and medical secretaries. In July 2026 it reopened the round to new investors including Nvidia, taking it to $100M, and said it would open a Bay Area office; it had by then signed French automaker Renault.
How it ended up
Still running and scaling: product is live with paying customers, the round has grown to $100M with Nvidia on the cap table, and the company is expanding into the Bay Area to compete for AI talent.
Background
Gradium is a Paris-based voice AI startup spun out of Kyutai, the non-profit lab founded in 2023 with €300M from French billionaires and Eric Schmidt. Its bet is that voice, not text, is the next interface to AI, and that the winning product is an audio-first model with ultra-low latency — voices that respond almost instantly, without the awkward pause that makes AI agents feel robotic.
The company was founded in September 2025 by Neil Zeghidour — a Kyutai cofounder and former Google Brain, DeepMind and Facebook researcher — with three fellow scientists. It came out of stealth in December 2025 with a $70M all-equity seed led by FirstMark Capital and Eurazeo, with DST Global, Korelya Capital, Amplify Partners, Xavier Niel, Rodolphe Saadé and Eric Schmidt participating. Within three months it had a dozen paying customers, using its voices in video games and medical-secretary applications.
In July 2026 Gradium reopened the seed to new investors including Nvidia, bringing the round to $100M, and said it would open a Bay Area office to compete for talent. It had by then signed French automaker Renault. The company faces entrenched competition — TechCrunch notes ElevenLabs was valued at $11B in February 2026 — but argues its proven technical base and speed give it a chance to take the leading players' place.
What has to be true
- Voice removes the friction of typing and reads back instantly, so the company bet the next interface shift favors audio-first models over text models with speech output bolted on.
- Kyutai's open-source models had already shown they were competitive across transcription, synthesis, dialogue and translation, giving Gradium a technical head start.
- A huge seed let the startup move fast against well-funded incumbents, which cofounder Zeghidour called a 'strong speed constraint'.
- The spinout model sustains non-profit research: Kyutai keeps its lab running while Gradium commercialises and shares value back.
What can be applied
A research lab can prove a market before a company exists: the spinout started with a dozen customers and a $70M seed because the technology had already found demand as open source.
Aftermath
As of July 2026 Gradium is live and scaling. It has landed customers including Renault, reopened its seed to Nvidia to reach $100M, and is opening a Bay Area office to recruit AI talent. Its stated ambition is to displace the market's leading voice AI players, notably ElevenLabs, within about a year of launch.
Sources
- Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt backs voice AI startup Gradium in $70m seed round
- Paris-based AI voice startup Gradium raises $100M seed, backed by Nvidia
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