Gradium

Reviewed active Updated Jul 9, 2026

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Location Paris, France
Founded 2025
Latest Stage Seed
Total Raised $100M+
Website https://gradium.ai
Sector
ai voice-ai generative-ai speech developer-tools ai-infrastructure

Investors

Eric Schmidt seed (2025)
Xavier Niel seed (2025)
Sunil Dhaliwal Seed (2025)
Guillermo Rauch Seed (2025)
Olivier Pomel 2025 (2025)
eurazeo seed (2025)
DST Global seed (2025)
amplify-partners Seed (2025)
vercel Seed (2025)
datadog 2025 (2025)
innovation-endeavors Seed ($70M, co-led FirstMark/Eurazeo) (2025)
Kima Ventures Seed ($70M co-led by FirstMark Capital + Eurazeo; DST Global, Eric Schmidt, Rodolphe Saadé, Korelya, Amplify Partners also participated) (2025)

Founders

Neil Zeghidour Co-Founder & CEO

About

Gradium is a Paris-based voice AI company developing audio foundation models with a focus on ultra-low-latency speech synthesis and understanding 12. The company was spun out of Kyutai, a non-profit AI research lab in Paris that was launched in 2023 with a €300M endowment from Xavier Niel, Rodolphe Saadé, and Eric Schmidt 23. Gradium is co-founded and led by Neil Zeghidour, a researcher formerly at Google Brain, DeepMind, and Facebook (Meta) 12. The company was founded in September 2025 5 and Forbes first reported in October 2025 that Zeghidour was in talks to raise a $60M round 4; the round closed at $70M and was announced on December 2, 2025 5. The company’s product line spans text-to-speech, speech-to-text, translation, and voice cloning aimed at developers 1.

On 2026-07-09 Gradium announced that Nvidia had led a $30M extension to its seed round, bringing the total seed to over $100M and making it one of the largest seed rounds ever raised by a European AI startup 12. Gradium plans to use the capital to open a Bay Area office and compete for AI talent in the U.S. 23. The company has already landed enterprise customers including French auto manufacturer Renault 2.

Disclaimer: This is a lean profile built from initial round coverage and may be expanded as more information becomes available.

Funding History

Date Round Amount Lead Co-investors
2025-12-02 Seed (first tranche) $70M FirstMark Capital, Eurazeo DST Global Partners, Eric Schmidt, Xavier Niel, Rodolphe Saadé, Korelya Capital, Amplify Partners 567
2026-07-09 Seed (extension) $30M Nvidia (extension participants not individually disclosed) 12

What Investors Say

No independently sourced investor testimonials found at time of publication.

What Founders Say

Neil Zeghidour, Co-Founder & CEO of Gradium, on the state of the voice AI market: “The voice AI sector is strongly accelerating.” 2

Sources

  1. Ivan Mehta, “Paris-based AI voice startup Gradium raises $100M seed, backed by Nvidia,” TechCrunch, July 9, 2026. Accessed July 9, 2026. https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/09/paris-based-ai-voice-startup-gradium-raises-100m-seed-backed-by-nvidia/↩↩↩↩↩

  2. “Nvidia backs voice AI startup Gradium, bringing seed round to over $100m,” Sifted, July 2026. Accessed July 9, 2026. https://sifted.eu/articles/gradium-nvidia-30m-extension-seed↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩

  3. “AI money watch: five funding rounds that matter today,” The Next Web, July 9, 2026. Accessed July 9, 2026. https://thenextweb.com/news/ai-deep-tech-funding-rounds-roundup-oratomic-prime-intellect-gradium↩↩

  4. Iain Martin, “Former Meta And Google Researcher In Talks To Raise $60 Million For Voice AI Startup,” Forbes, October 9, 2025. Accessed July 9, 2026. https://www.forbes.com/sites/iainmartin/2025/10/09/former-meta-and-google-researcher-in-talks-to-raise-60-million-for-voice-ai-startup/↩

  5. TechCrunch, “Paris-based AI voice startup Gradium nabs $70M seed,” December 2, 2025. Accessed July 2026. https://techcrunch.com/2025/12/02/paris-based-ai-voice-startup-gradium-nabs-70m-seed/ — Primary tier-1 tech press confirming $70M seed announced December 2, 2025, co-led by FirstMark Capital and Eurazeo, with DST Global Partners, Eric Schmidt, and Xavier Niel among participants. ↩↩↩

  6. Sifted, “Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt backs voice AI startup Gradium in $70m seed round,” December 2, 2025. Accessed July 2026. https://sifted.eu/articles/gradium-70m-seed-voice-ai — Independent European tech press: confirms $70M entirely-equity seed, adds Rodolphe Saadé, Korelya Capital, and Amplify Partners to the disclosed participant list. ↩

  7. FirstMark Capital blog, “TechCrunch: AI Voice Startup Gradium Nabs $70M Seed,” December 2, 2025. Accessed July 2026. https://firstmark.com/story/ai-voice-startup-gradium-nabs-70m-seed/ — Lead investor’s own confirmation of the syndicate, naming DST Global Partners, Eric Schmidt, and Xavier Niel as participants. ↩