speech-models
(2)
Kalpa Labs
Kalpa Labs is a San Francisco audio research lab building a generalist speech model - one system that handles speech-to-text, text-to-speech, voice cloning, and speech-in/speech-out reasoning with the kind of instruction-following and in-context learning that large language models brought to text. Founded in 2025 by ex-Google Assistant ML lead Prashant Shishodia and ex-high-frequency-trading engineer Gautam Jha, the company is a Y Combinator Fall 2025 startup aiming to collapse today's fragmented speech stack into a single, steerable model for developers and voice-agent builders.
Rime
Rime is a San Francisco voice AI company building human-sounding text-to-speech models for enterprise. Founded by linguists and engineers, its Mist and Arcana models power more than 100 million customer phone conversations every month for brands including Domino's and Wingstop, with sub-200ms response times and pronunciation control designed for production call centers.