Deepgram Becomes Voice AI Unicorn With $130M Series C to Accelerate Global Expansion and Restaurant Push

New updates have been reported about Deepgram.

Deepgram has raised $130 million in a Series C round led by AVP at a $1.3 billion valuation, positioning the voice AI infrastructure provider as a key beneficiary of accelerating enterprise adoption of voice-based automation in sales, support, and consumer applications. Existing backers including Alkeon, In-Q-Tel, Madrona, Tiger, Wing, and Y Combinator re-upped, while new strategic investors such as Alumni Ventures, Columbia University, Princeville Capital, Twilio, and SAP joined the syndicate, bringing Deepgram’s total funding to more than $215 million. CEO Scott Stephenson said the company was cash-flow positive last year and did not need the capital, but chose to accept it to fund faster growth as demand for voice AI “goes mainstream” and as multiple investors approached the company; he emphasized a preference for strategic partners with technical depth in voice AI and strong enterprise relationships. AVP partner Elizabeth de Saint-Aignan said that in conversations with large enterprises, voice AI increasingly surfaced as a priority in contact centers and sales development, and that a significant portion of those deployments were already powered by Deepgram, reinforcing the firm’s conviction in the investment.

Deepgram provides a suite of speech-to-text and text-to-speech models, along with low-latency APIs for conversational recognition and interruption handling, and reports more than 1,300 organizations using its technology, including prominent voice-native startups and communications platforms. The company plans to deploy the new capital to expand its global footprint, strengthen multilingual capabilities, and deepen vertical coverage, with a particular focus on quick-service restaurants. As part of this strategy, Deepgram acquired Y Combinator–backed OfOne, which built a voice AI ordering system for restaurants that claims over 93% order accuracy, targeting what Stephenson frames as a potential first “positive” mass-market experience with voice AI for hundreds of millions of consumers. This move comes amid an industry push to improve reliability in restaurant voice ordering after high-profile setbacks and aligns with analyst forecasts that the broader voice market could grow more than 30% annually to reach $14–$20 billion by 2030, creating room for model and API providers like Deepgram to scale into multibillion-dollar infrastructure businesses at the core of enterprise and startup voice solutions.