Voice AI Startup Rime Raises $24M Series A Funding to Enhance Enterprise Call Handling

Rime, a San Francisco-based voice AI startup, has secured $24 million in a Series A funding round led by M13 Ventures. The company, founded in 2022, aims to gain a competitive edge in the market by training its voice AI models on conversational data collected from a recording studio in San Francisco. Unlike relying on web scraping for audio, Rime focuses on tuning its voice models to accurately pronounce different brand entities and industry-specific terms.

The startup is now shifting focus to develop better speech-to-speech models to reduce latency, improve turn-taking, and address issues like background noise. Rime boasts customers in various sectors including food service, healthcare, airlines, and fintech, and claims that its training data and model positioning have helped it win enterprise contracts from clients like Mayo Clinic, Dialpad, Upstart, and Asurion.

With the new funding, Rime plans to expand its team and hire for model development, engineering, and partnerships.