Voice AI company Deepgram has raised $130 million in Series C funding at a valuation of $1.3 billion, as it looks to expand its real-time voice AI platform and scale deployments across enterprise and developer markets.
The round was led by AVP, with participation from existing investors including Alkeon, In-Q-Tel, Madrona, Tiger, Wing, Y Combinator, and funds and accounts managed by BlackRock.
New investors in the round include Alumni Ventures and Princeville Capital, alongside strategic backers such as Twilio, ServiceNow Ventures, SAP, and Citi Ventures.
The University of Michigan and Columbia University also participated, joining existing academic investors including Stanford University.
According to the company, the funding will support continued development of its real-time voice AI APIs, international expansion, and a number of strategic initiatives announced alongside the financing.
Elizabeth de Saint-Aignan, general partner at AVP, says: “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.
“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.”
Scott Stephenson, CEO and co-founder of Deepgram, says: “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.
“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.”
He added: “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.”
Expanding platform and partnerships
Deepgram says more than 1,300 organizations currently use its APIs to build voice-enabled applications, including speech recognition, speech generation, analytics, orchestration, and autonomous voice agents.
Andy O’Dower, vice president of product management for voice and video at Twilio, says: “Voice is a critical, strategic, and data-rich customer engagement channel.
“Twilio’s flexible orchestration capabilities and global communications infrastructure, combined with speech recognition powered by Deepgram APIs, deliver seamless, low-latency, and human-like AI agent experiences that are powering today’s Voice AI renaissance.”
Acquisition of OfOne
Deepgram also announced the acquisition of OfOne, an AI-native voice platform focused on restaurants and quick-service drive-thru operations. The company says OfOne’s technology will form the foundation of a new offering, Deepgram for Restaurants.
Will Edwards, now general manager of Deepgram for Restaurants and formerly CEO of OfOne, says: “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.
“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.”
Patents and community expansion
The company said part of the new funding will be used to expand its patent portfolio, building on filings dating back to 2016. Several US patents granted in 2025 cover areas including end-to-end speech recognition, hardware-efficient processing, and neural representation-based audio search and classification.
Deepgram also plans to open a new Voice AI Collaboration Hub in San Francisco, intended as a space for customer engagement, developer events, demonstrations, and industry collaboration.
The company says the combination of new funding, acquisitions, and expanded infrastructure is aimed at supporting broader adoption of voice AI across enterprise, platform, and developer use cases.
