Rime Reels In $24 Million

<p><strong>SAN FRANCISCO<&sol;strong> &&num;8212&semi; <a href&equals;"https&colon;&sol;&sol;cts&period;businesswire&period;com&sol;ct&sol;CT&quest;id&equals;smartlink&amp&semi;url&equals;https&percnt;3A&percnt;2F&percnt;2Frime&period;ai&percnt;2F&amp&semi;esheet&equals;54570768&amp&semi;newsitemid&equals;20260715773471&amp&semi;lan&equals;en-US&amp&semi;anchor&equals;Rime&amp&semi;index&equals;2&amp&semi;md5&equals;13cca97989353ded08942905ef5f9e2a" target&equals;"&lowbar;blank" rel&equals;"nofollow noopener" shape&equals;"rect">Rime<&sol;a>&comma; an enterprise voice AI platform&comma; has reeled in &dollar;24 million in Series A funding led by M13&comma; with participation from Twilio Ventures&comma; Corazon Capital&comma; and continued participation from Unusual Ventures and other existing investors&period; Morgan Blumberg&comma; Partner at M13&comma; will join Rime’s Board of Directors&period; The funds will be used to invest in Rime’s proprietary conversational dataset and make strategic hires in engineering and research as the company scales its infrastructure&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Rime also announced the appointment of Rafael Valle as Chief Science Officer&period; Valle&comma; who previously led audio research at Meta’s Super Intelligence Lab&comma; joins Rime to accelerate the company&&num;8217&semi;s research and product innovation&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Voice is the last interface computers are still bad at&period; While many voice AI companies chase generic signals of naturalness&comma; Rime takes a linguistics-first approach&period; Founded by Lily Clifford &lpar;while pursuing a Stanford linguistics PhD&rpar;&comma; Brooke Larson &lpar;PhD linguist&comma; ex-Amazon Alexa&rpar;&comma; and Ares Geovanis &lpar;Stanford engineer&rpar;&comma; Rime blends academic speech science with one of the world&&num;8217&semi;s largest collections of expressive multilingual conversational speech&period; The bet is that the company defining this next interface won&&num;8217&semi;t be the one with the biggest model&comma; it will be the one that can measure what <i>good<&sol;i> actually sounds like&comma; and design toward it&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&&num;8220&semi;The things that matter most in conversation are the hardest to pin down&period; Response relevance is hard to specify&semi; speech appropriateness is hard to verify&period; There&&num;8217&semi;s no unit test for sounding like you care&comma;&&num;8221&semi; said Lily Clifford&comma; co-founder and CEO of Rime&period; &&num;8220&semi;That&&num;8217&semi;s exactly why this is a design problem&comma; not just an engineering one&period; We&&num;8217&semi;re building voice interaction models&comma; systems where our linguistic judgment and taste become research instruments&comma; not afterthoughts&period; With this new funding and Rafael Valle joining as Chief Science Officer&comma; we&&num;8217&semi;re 10x-ing our data investment to define the design language of conversational general intelligence&period;”<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Today&comma; Rime powers nearly 100 million phone calls monthly for companies like Mayo Clinic&comma; Dialpad&comma; Upstart&comma; and Asurion&period; By staying focused strictly on the modeling layer and their linguistics roots&comma; the platform has gained significant traction in healthcare and financial services&comma; where pronunciation accuracy for complex terminology and HIPAA compliance are critical&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;In financial services&comma; the stakes for voice AI are exceptionally high and accuracy is a requirement for customer trust&comma;” said Shiv Indap&comma; Upstart&period; &OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;Rime’s ability to handle complex financial use cases with precision allows us to build experiences that truly serve our customer’s needs&period;”<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>The efficacy of Rime’s approach was recently validated by an independent study conducted by Miravoice&comma; which evaluated 12 voices from three vendors&comma; across 100&comma;000 calls&comma; finding that Rime’s voices resulted in statistically significantly lower &OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;Hung Up During Intro” &lpar;HUDI&rpar; rates compared to major competitors&period; Rime also demonstrated the fastest median time to completion among all providers tested&comma; proving that linguistic nuances like cadence and speed drive measurable business results&period; Rime voices keep more customers on the line longer&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&&num;8220&semi;The design patterns that will define the speech-to-speech era of AI haven&&num;8217&semi;t been built yet&period; Rime is doing the foundational work by combining frontier AI with deep linguistic expertise to create the speech infrastructure the next generation of AI products will rely on&comma;” said Morgan Blumberg&comma; Partner at M13&period; &OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;Lily&comma; Ares and Brooke are building Rime with the rare combination of world-class AI research and deep linguistic expertise to deploy real time voice people can trust in complex&comma; regulated environments&period;&&num;8221&semi;<&sol;p>&NewLine;