Deepgram, a San Francisco-based voice AI company, has secured $130m in Series C funding, raising its valuation to $1.3bn.

The latest investment round saw participation from AVP as the lead investor, with involvement from new backers such as Alumni Ventures, Princeville Capital, and Citi Ventures.

Existing investors including Tiger Global, In-Q-Tel, Madrona, Alkeon, Y Combinator, Wing, and BlackRock-managed funds also contributed.

The University of Michigan and Columbia University have also made investments, joining other existing academic investors like Stanford University.

Deepgram provides AI models and infrastructure for enterprises and developers to build and operate custom voice agents capable of managing real-time and context-aware conversations at scale.

Its technology currently supports over 50 languages and is utilised by more than 1,300 organisations globally through its API platform. Its client list includes NASA and Amazon Web Services.

The platform underpins customer service AI tools across industries such as retail, financial technology, and healthcare.

Deepgram CEO and co-founder Scott Stephenson said: “As we rapidly approach a world where billions of simultaneous conversations are powered by Voice AI, enterprises and developers need real-time, reliable infrastructure capable of fully duplex, contextual conversations at scale – this is Deepgram.

“We are pleased to welcome AVP and our new strategic investors. Together with our existing investors, their conviction reflects the emergence of the Voice AI economy – and Deepgram’s role in powering it.”

As part of its recent expansion efforts, Deepgram announced the acquisition of OfOne, a voice AI platform designed for restaurant drive-thrus.

OfOne’s team has joined Deepgram to strengthen its services in the quick-service restaurant sector.

The company did not disclose financial details regarding the acquisition.

Deepgram for Restaurants general manager Will Edwards (OfOne former CEO) said: “We are incredibly proud to join the Deepgram team. Deepgram has built the most advanced real-time voice platform in the world, and it is the perfect foundation for scaling what we started at OfOne.”

Deepgram aims to use the Series C proceeds to expand its international presence, launch new models, and pursue further acquisitions.

Its suite of products comprises speech-to-text models, text-to-speech systems, conversational speech recognition technology adapted for interruptions during dialogue, APIs for enterprise conversational AI deployment, and options for domain-specific model customisation.