Cartesia Raises $64M to Advance Real-Time Voice AI

Cartesia, a voice AI startup, has raised $64 million in a Series A funding round led by Kleiner Perkins, bringing its total funding to $91M. Other investors include Index Ventures, Lightspeed, A*, Factory, Greycroft, Dell Technologies Capital, and Samsung Ventures.

What is Cartesia?

• Founded in 2023 out of Stanford's AI Lab by Karan Goel, Arjun Desai, Brandon Yang, Albert Gu, and Stanford professor Chris Ré.
• Specializes in real-time generative AI models for voice applications.
• Flagship model: Sonic – delivers ultra-low latency, cutting response time from 90ms to 45ms.
• Over 10,000 customers, including Quora, Cresta, and Rasa.

What’s Next for Cartesia?

With the new funding, Cartesia plans to:
✅ Expand its team
✅ Enhance its platform with next-gen voice AI models
✅ Scale its infrastructure

Introducing Sonic 2.0 & Sonic Turbo

• Sonic 2.0: Features 90ms time-to-first-audio (TTFA) and improved accuracy in challenging transcripts.
• Sonic Turbo: An extreme low-latency model designed for ultra-fast voice interactions.

Why It Matters

Cartesia is pioneering state-space model (SSM) architecture, a more efficient and cost-effective alternative to traditional transformer-based AI models.

Their goal? Ubiquitous, real-time voice intelligence on any device.

With this funding and cutting-edge technology, Cartesia is emerging as a key player in the future of voice AI.