# Russ d'Sa

> Russ d'Sa is the co-founder and CEO of LiveKit, the open source real-time communication platform that became the connective tissue of voice AI. When you tap the voice button in ChatGPT, your phone is talking to a LiveKit server. He has built five companies, shipped Twitter Cards, sold a launcher app (Evie) to Medium, and now runs the nervous system for OpenAI, xAI, Salesforce Agentforce, Tesla, Spotify and thousands of other voice agents.

- **Role:** Co-founder and CEO at LiveKit
- **Organizations:** LiveKit, Medium (prior), Evie Labs (prior), Twitter (prior), 23andMe (prior), Expa (prior), Y Combinator (alum)
- **Nationality:** American
- **Education:** BS (Honors), Computer Science, University of California, Davis, MS, Computer Science, University of California, Davis
- **Known for:** Co-founded and leads LiveKit, the open source WebRTC platform powering ChatGPT Voice Mode, LiveKit Agents framework downloaded more than 1M times monthly, Customers include OpenAI, xAI, Salesforce Agentforce, Tesla, Coursera, Spotify, Character.AI

## Career timeline

- **early career** — Software engineer at 23andMe
- **~2010** — Joined Twitter as the 75th employee; created Twitter Cards
- **later** — Worked at Expa, the Garrett Camp startup studio
- **2014-2019** — Co-founded Evie Labs, maker of the Evie Launcher for Android
- **2019** — Evie Labs acquired by Medium; ran product for creators and readers
- **2021** — Co-founded LiveKit with David Zhao in the middle of the pandemic
- **2024** — LiveKit becomes infrastructure for OpenAI ChatGPT Voice Mode
- **2026-01** — LiveKit raises $100M Series C at a $1B valuation, led by Index Ventures

## Achievements

- Co-founded and leads LiveKit, the open source WebRTC platform powering ChatGPT Voice Mode
- LiveKit Agents framework downloaded more than 1M times monthly
- Customers include OpenAI, xAI, Salesforce Agentforce, Tesla, Coursera, Spotify, Character.AI
- Raised $181M total funding across Seed, A, B and Series C
- Built Twitter Cards while at Twitter
- Founded and exited Evie Labs (Evie Launcher) to Medium in 2019

## Latest updates

- **2026-01** — LiveKit raised $100M Series C at $1B valuation, led by Index Ventures with Salesforce Ventures, Altimeter, Redpoint and Hanabi participating.
- **2025-08** — Announced LiveKit Cloud for voice agents - serverless deployment for AI voice apps.

## Links

- Website: https://livekit.io
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/russelldsa
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/dsa
- GitHub: https://github.com/dsa

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/russ-d-sa
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-05-15