Cartesia
AI Voice Synthesis
- Valuation
- ~$1B+(2025)
- Total Funding
- $91M+
- Profit Status
- Pre-profit,rapid growth
- Employees
- ~60
About Cartesia
Cartesia is a real-time voice AI company building ultra-low-latency speech models based on state space model (SSM) architectures. Its Sonic text-to-speech model produces natural, expressive voices with sub-100ms latency, and the company develops on-device and streaming voice technology for conversational agents. Founded by the researchers behind the Mamba SSM architecture.
Company History
Founded 2023 by Stanford researchers Karan Goel and Albert Gu, co-inventor of the Mamba state space model architecture. Cartesia builds efficient real-time voice models with sub-100ms latency, competing directly with ElevenLabs on conversational voice. Released the Sonic TTS model and Sonic Turbo for streaming applications, and Ink speech-to-text. Raised a $27M seed (2024) and a $64M Series A (2025) led by Kleiner Perkins and Lightspeed, reaching around a $1B+ valuation as demand for voice agents surged.
Company Timeline
3 milestones- 2023Founded by Karan Goel and Albert Gu (Mamba SSM co-inventor)
- 2024$27M seed; Sonic TTS model launched with sub-100ms latency
- 2025$64M Series A led by Kleiner Perkins; Sonic Turbo and Ink STT released
Funding Rounds
2 rounds| Date | Round | Amount | Investors |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | Seed | $27M | Index Ventures, Lightspeed, A* |
| 2025 | Series A | $64M | Kleiner Perkins, Lightspeed, Index Ventures |
Products & Services
5- Sonic (TTS)
- Sonic Turbo
- Ink (STT)
- Cartesia Voice API
- Line (voice agents)
People & ecosystem
Key People
- Karan Goel (CEO, co-founder)
- Albert Gu (Chief Scientist, co-founder)
Key Investors
- Kleiner Perkins
- Lightspeed Venture Partners
- Index Ventures
- A* (A-Star)
- Samsung Next
Competitive Landscape
- ElevenLabs
- Hume AI
- PlayHT
- Deepgram
- OpenAI (voice)