The problem
Teams building voice products need fast, accurate, affordable speech recognition and voices without training their own models
What they do
Speech-to-text, text-to-speech and voice agent APIs for developers and enterprises
Traction $100M+ ARR (Aug 2026); ARR +115% YoY entering 2025 (Sacra); 200,000+ developers
Hiring trend
- Open roles
- 82
- Ops roles
- 4
- Headcount
- ~300-375
Headcount ~203 → ~298 Q1 2025 to Q1 2026 (Revelio, +47%); open roles 72 (2026, Revelio) → 88 now
Hiring in
- San Francisco
- Ann Arbor
- London
- Remote (US)
- Remote (Singapore)
Latest news
Sep 2026
Hired Ed Anuff (ex-IBM watsonx.data, DataStax, Apigee) as Chief Product Officer ↗Glassdoor
4.5 ★ 47 reviews ↗Funding
- Last round
- $130M (Series C; EDBI strategic extension Aug 2026, amount undisclosed)
- Stage
- Series C
- Date
- Jan 2026
Led by AVP (with Alkeon, Madrona, Tiger Global, In-Q-Tel, BlackRock-managed funds)
- Hiring+282 open roles on the live job board (30+ roles = +2)
- Funding recency+1.5Series C · $130M (Series C; EDBI strategic extension Aug 2026, amount undisclosed), Jan 2026 (9 months ago): 6–12 months = +1, $100M+ round +0.5
- Traction+0.75Some growth: $100M+ ARR (Aug 2026); ARR +115% YoY entering 2025 (Sacra); 200,000+ developers
- Red flags0None found in the last 24 months
- Total4.252 + 1.5 + 0.75 − 0 = 4.25 → Race (4.25–4.74)
Distance (Half) is a separate read on how long the lead can last. It doesn't change the score.
Distance
Half · edge: cheaper at size
A top independent voice AI API ($100M+ ARR, 200,000+ developers; powers Decagon, Sierra, Vapi, Granola) running its own models and infrastructure, cash-flow positive at end of 2024, with a second line in TTS and voice agents; OpenAI, Google and ElevenLabs sell rival voice models to the same developers.
Sources: Deepgram: Flux TTS launch as it passes $100M ARR; Decagon, Sierra, Vapi, Granola as customers (Aug 2026) ↗ · Sacra: Deepgram ARR, usage growth and competition ↗ · Built In: Deepgram ended 2024 cash-flow positive with 400+ enterprise customers ↗ · Reuters: Deepgram raises $130M at $1.3B valuation (Jan 2026) ↗
Last checked Oct 25, 2026