Chennai: Voice AI startup Gnani AI has raised $10 million in a Series B round, as it plans to scale its models and deepen offerings in the international markets. The company offers voice automation for enterprises using proprietary models and an agentic AI platform.Ganesh Gopalan, the company’s chief executive and co-founder of Gnani, said they are a key player in the voice AI market, processing over 30 million voice interactions daily. He said the startup counts enterprises, including the country’s top private banks, as its customers, and now the focus is to expand overseas in markets such as Japan, Indonesia, the US and the Middle East.With the capital, Gnani will focus on the research and development of AI large language models, specifically 30-billion-parameter voice-to-voice models. Parameters in LLMs refer to capabilities, with a larger size indicating stronger capabilities. “Currently, the voice conversations are processed by converting speech to text and processing them in LLMs and converting text to speech again. Voice models will reduce latency, be more accurate and can be good at tracking emotions. We have a turn-taking model, which is crucial for voice AI agents,” he said.Aavishkaar Capital backed the current round with participation from Infoedge Ventures. The startup, backed by the India AI mission, was founded in 2016 and has raised about $8 million in previous rounds. Gopalan said the company was EBITDA profitable and will raise further capital in Series B in another tranche and is gearing up for Series C for a growth push. One of the early adoption of LLMs is seen in voice applications, where companies use it for sales, marketing, customer support, loan collections etc., It is particularly higher in the banking and financial services sector. Gnani competes with AI model providers and cloud telephony companies.
