French AI voice startup Gradium officially emerged from stealth mode on December 3, announcing a $70 million seed round, setting a new record for the European voice AI sector. The round was led by FirstMark Capital and Eurazeo, with additional investments from French telecom billionaire Xavier Niel, DST Global Partners, and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt.
Gradium originated from the French non-profit AI lab Kyutai, which was founded in September this year. Its founder, Neil Zeghidour, previously worked as a voice researcher at Google DeepMind. The company focuses on audio language models with "millisecond-level response," initially covering five languages: English, French, German, Spanish, and Portuguese, with plans to add Italian and Dutch within the year.
Zeghidour stated that traditional voice models focus on voice cloning, while Gradium emphasizes "ultra-low latency + advanced emotional expression" as core metrics — aiming for a delay of less than 200 milliseconds, while approaching human-like intonation, pauses, and emotional granularity. Developers can currently access the cloud model via API, billed by the minute, with the edge version SDK expected to launch in Q1 2026.
Investors are optimistic about Europe's multilingual scenarios and compliance advantages. An associate at Eurazeo noted that "real-time voice feedback" will become a standard for the next generation of human-machine interfaces, from AI agents and call centers to interactive entertainment. Faced with strong competitors such as OpenAI and ElevenLabs, Gradium, backed by $70 million in "ammunition" and the Kyutai open-source ecosystem, plans to expand its team to 80 people this year and establish product centers in Berlin and New York to compete for a place in the global voice AI infrastructure market.
