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Rime picks up $24 million Series A to help enterprises field customer calls
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Voice AI startups’ biggest unlock has been handling calls for enterprises in areas like sales, marketing, and customer support.
Key facts
- Founded in 2022 by former Stanford PhD student Lily Clifford, ex-Amazon Alexa engineer Brooke Larson, and Stanford engineer Ares Geovanos, Rime has built a recording studio in San Francisco
- Rime on Wednesday said it has raised $24 million in a Series A funding round that was led by M13 Ventures
- With the new funding, Rime is planning to expand its team of 35 people, aiming to hire for model development, engineering, and partnerships
- Clifford said that despite progress in voice AI development, enterprises still prefer legacy IVR (interactive voice response) implementations, as AI voice technology still can’t match up to IVR’s
Summary
San Francisco-based Rime is trying to gain an edge in this crowded market with its voice AI models that are trained on conversational data that it records, aiming to reduce its clients’ customization load. Founded in 2022 by former Stanford PhD student Lily Clifford, ex-Amazon Alexa engineer Brooke Larson, and Stanford engineer Ares Geovanos, Rime has built a recording studio in San Francisco to collect its own conversational data rather than relying on scraping the web for audio. The startup said it focuses on tuning its voice models to nail the pronunciation of different brand entities and industry-specific terms. Rime on Wednesday said it has raised $24 million in a Series A funding round that was led by M13 Ventures.