Rime, a San Francisco-based voice AI startup, has raised $24 million in a Series A round led by M13 Ventures, with participation from Twilio Ventures, Corazon Capital, Unusual Ventures, and existing backers. The company, founded in 2022 by Lily Clifford, Brooke Larson, and Ares Geovanos, differentiates itself by recording its own conversational data in a dedicated studio rather than relying on scraped web audio, using a phoneme-based architecture to handle industry-specific pronunciation.
Clifford said enterprises still favor legacy IVR systems because voice AI has not yet matched their reliability, noting that while large language models have made building voice applications easier, the interaction experience for end users remains unremarkable. Rime is shifting from a multi-model pipeline toward integrated speech-to-speech models to reduce latency and improve conversational flow.
The company serves clients in food service, healthcare, airlines, and fintech, including Mayo Clinic, Dialpad, Upstart, and Asurion. It recently hired Rafael Valle, previously of Meta Superintelligence Labs and Nvidia, as chief scientist. M13’s Morgan Blumberg, who is joining Rime’s board, said the company’s focus on low-latency, reliable models in regulated industries sets it apart from competitors expanding into broader application layers.
Featured image: Credit: Rime
