# Scott Stephenson

> Scott Stephenson is the co-founder and CEO of Deepgram, the voice AI company building foundational speech-to-text, text-to-speech, and voice agent models from scratch. A particle physicist who once helped build a dark-matter detector two miles underground, he now runs an AI company used by NASA, Spotify, and Twilio.

- **Role:** Co-Founder and CEO at Deepgram
- **Organizations:** Deepgram, Y Combinator (W16), University of Michigan, UC Davis
- **Nationality:** American
- **Education:** PhD, Particle Physics, University of Michigan, Postdoctoral research, UC Davis
- **Known for:** Co-founded Deepgram, a foundational voice AI company serving 500+ enterprises including NASA, Spotify, and Twilio, Shipped the world's first end-to-end deep learning speech-to-text models, years before OpenAI Whisper, Raised over $245M in funding, including a $130M Series C

## Career timeline

- **pre-2015** — PhD research in particle physics at University of Michigan, building a dark matter detector two miles underground
- **2014-2015** — Postdoctoral researcher at UC Davis
- **2015** — Co-founded Deepgram with Adam Sypniewski and Noah Shutty
- **2016** — Deepgram accepted into Y Combinator (W16)
- **2024** — Launched Deepgram Voice Agent API
- **2026** — Closed Series C funding round; total raised approx $245M

## Achievements

- Co-founded Deepgram, a foundational voice AI company serving 500+ enterprises including NASA, Spotify, and Twilio
- Shipped the world's first end-to-end deep learning speech-to-text models, years before OpenAI Whisper
- Raised over $245M in funding, including a $130M Series C
- Built Deepgram into a developer-first voice AI platform with its own models, data centers, and labeling pipeline
- PhD in particle physics with contributions to dark matter detection research

## Latest updates

- **2026-01** — Deepgram closed its latest funding round, reportedly $130M, bringing total funding to approximately $245M
- **2024-11** — Sat down with RedMonk to discuss why he is building voice AI from first principles
- **2024-09** — Launched Deepgram Voice Agent API for real-time conversational AI

## Links

- Website: https://deepgram.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-stephenson-/
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/deepgramscott
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/deepgram/

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/scott-stephenson
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-05-22