Startup profile · funding coverage
Gradium funding, valuation and investors
Paris-based low-latency speech AI developer spun out of Kyutai research for real-time voice agents.
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Funding, valuation & investors
Answer-first snapshotLatest funding
Seed extension; cumulative total $100M
Incremental amount not separately disclosed; $100M total seed including original $70M · July 8, 2026
Latest known valuation
Not publicly disclosed
Total disclosed equity funding
$170M
Excludes debt, grants, acquisitions, secondaries, and IPO proceeds.
Current status
private
seed · Paris, France / San Francisco Bay Area, United States
Investors in latest funding
Other: NVIDIA
Overview
Gradium was founded in 2025 by researchers associated with the Kyutai speech AI laboratory. It builds real-time speech generation and speech-to-text models and serves agentic audio APIs. The company announced a $70M seed on December 2, 2025, co-led by FirstMark Capital and Eurazeo, with participation from DST Global Partners and other investors.
On July 8, 2026 it announced an extension of the seed to $100M cumulative, with NVIDIA participating; the exact incremental amount was not separately stated in the company release.
Why Gradium is interesting
A clear commercial use of efficient model inference in the voice category, where latency and interruption quality are measurable. Its 2026 $100M figure is cumulative seed capital, not a new $100M round.
Product & use cases
Low-latency multilingual speech foundation models, voice agents, transcription and audio streaming APIs.
- Interactive low-delay audio assistants
- Speech generation and transcription at scale
- Voice interfaces that need fast turn taking
Key facts
- $70M seed announced December 2, 2025
- July 2026 extension brings cumulative seed capital to $100M, including initial $70M
- NVIDIA joined the extension; no separate $100M new round announced
Funding history (newest first)
Seed extension; cumulative total $100M
2026-07-08 Incremental amount not separately disclosed; $100M total seed including original $70MSource: Read source · gradium.ai
Seed
2025-12-02 $70M- FirstMark Capital (lead)
- Eurazeo (lead)
- DST Global Partners (participant)
- Korelya Capital (participant)
- Amplify Partners (participant)
- Liquid2 (participant)
- Eric Schmidt (participant)
- Xavier Niel (participant)
- Rodolphe Saadé (participant)
Source: Read source · gradium.ai
Competitive landscape
Edge: Kyutai research lineage and specialist audio efficiency focus; voice latency is more commercially testable than claims of general intelligence.
Competes with Cartesia and other speech API providers. Better streaming latency does not imply cheaper training of general-purpose text models. July 2026 company statement should not be double counted as a separate $100M raise.
Market / IPO context
Editorial / static context — not a live quote.
FAQs about Gradium
Practical answers founders, operators, and investors typically search for.
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Editorial note: AI tools assisted with research, structure, or drafting. Venture Capital Tracker retains human editorial responsibility for factual accuracy, relevance, and source quality before publication.