Paris-based AI voice startup Gradium raises $100M seed, backed by Nvidia
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- Gradium reopened its seed round to new investors including Nvidia, bringing total seed funding to $100M announced Thursday.
- Gradium will use the cash to open a Bay Area office, citing proximity to Anthropic, Google, Meta, and OpenAI as a competitive advantage.
- Gradium originally launched from stealth in December with $70M from FirstMark Capital, Eurazeo, DST Global Partners, Eric Schmidt, and Xavier Niel.
- Kyutai, the French AI lab backed by Niel, spun out Gradium; both were co-founded by Neil Zeghidour, a former Google Brain, DeepMind, and Facebook researcher.
- Gradium builds ultra-low-latency audio models aimed at eliminating the awkward pause that creeps into AI voice agent conversations.
- Gradium competes with ElevenLabs, valued at $11B in February, and Google's Gemini voice models, and has landed Renault as a customer since its December launch.
Why it matters: Gradium's $100M seed and ElevenLabs' $11B valuation show heavy capital concentrating in voice AI before the category has a clear winner. Gradium opening a Bay Area office — despite Paris being Europe's leading AI hub — confirms that top AI research talent and investor networks still tilt toward the US.
