LiveKit Raises $100M at $1B Valuation as Voice AI Infrastructure Gains Ground

LiveKit has raised $100 million in a Series C funding round led by Index Ventures that values the company at $1 billion, underscoring growing demand for the infrastructure that underpins voice- and video-based AI applications.

Founded in 2021 by Russ d’SaDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → and David ZhaoDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, LiveKit provides the real-time communications layer that allows AI models to interact naturally through voice and video. Its software handles low-latency audio and video streaming, manages interruptions and turn-taking, and balances traffic spikes—capabilities that have become increasingly important as AI systems move beyond text-based interfaces.

LiveKit’s technology is used by a range of high-profile customers, including OpenAI, Tesla, Spotify, Salesforce and xAIDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, as well as by emergency services and healthcare applications. One of its best-known deployments supports voice interactions in ChatGPT, following early experimentation that grew out of LiveKit’s open-source roots.

The company plans to use the new capital to expand product engineering and go-to-market teams, with headcount expected to roughly double over the next year. It also intends to deepen its work in areas such as robotics, where real-time, responsive communication between machines and AI models is becoming more relevant.

LiveKit’s rise reflects a broader shift in AI development, as voice and real-time interaction become central to how people and machines communicate. As competition intensifies and some customers build overlapping capabilities, the company is positioning itself as neutral infrastructure for a new generation of AI-driven applications.

Sources:
LiveKit
FinSMEs
TechCrunch
Bloomberg
PYMNTS

J.V.