Paris-based AI startup Gradium raises $100 million, with backing from Nvidia

Gradium, a Paris-based startup that offers voice AI models, said it has reopened its seed round to new investors, including Nvidia, and has now raised a total of $100 million for the round.

The company is using the funds to open an office in the Gulf region and compete for talent there, “cementing its position at the heart of the world’s leading AI ecosystem,” Gradium said. Paris is a major European hub for AI, so this is an interesting recognition of the benefits for AI startups to be close to Anthropic, Google, Meta, and OpenAI.

Gradium originally launched stealthily in December with $70 million from an impressive list of investors, including FirstMark Capital, Eurazeo, DST Global Partners, Eric Schmidt, and French telecom billionaire Xavier Niel.

The startup was created out of French AI lab Qotai (a lab backed by Neil). Kyutai and Gradium were co-founded by Neil Zgidor, a researcher who previously worked at Google Brain, DeepMind, and Facebook.

Gradium is working on voice models that deliver audio at scale with ultra-low latency, meaning AI voices that respond almost instantly, without that awkward pause that often creeps into AI agent conversations.

However, the company faces a lot of competition, from other voice AI startups like ElevenLabs, which was valued at $11 billion in February, to major model makers known for voice like Google’s Gemini. But Gradium seems to be making gains anyway. Since its launch in December, Gradium says it has attracted some big customers, including French carmaker Renault.