Deepgram Acquires Daily to Integrate Real-Time Voice Infrastructure

Nvidia released a free, open-source speech-to-text model capable of transcribing up to 40 languages. The model works on recorded audio but not live streams, positioning it as a tool for meeting and medical transcription while leaving real-time transcription to competitors like ElevenLabs.

Block has developed a voice model called Dessa that produces human-like speech output. Unlike typical speech models that rely on large language models for knowledge retrieval, Dessa derives its knowledge from conversational data it has been trained on. The development represents progress in voice AI technology, though specific performance metrics and deployment details remain limited in available information.

Video AI startups are attracting significant capital as the technology demonstrates commercial viability. Utopai Studios, a Mountain View-based film startup, reached unicorn status with a $1 billion valuation on a $60 million funding round, with follow-on term sheets suggesting a $2 billion to $3 billion valuation. The momentum reflects broader investor enthusiasm for video generation technology, evidenced by recent mega-rounds for competitors including Higgsfield at $5.4 billion and Kling AI at $15 billion.

Deepgram optimized its Nova-3 speech-to-text model for AWS Trainium2 hardware, achieving 11-70 percent more audio processing per dollar on batch workloads. Working with AWS's Forward Deployed Engineering team, Deepgram ported the model from standard PyTorch to Trainium2 using the Neuron software stack and custom kernel optimizations. The work enables Deepgram to serve its 200,000 developers and 1,400 organizations more efficiently while reducing costs for customers who self-host models.