Vapi

Vapi, Inc., operating as Vapi.ai, is a developer-centric platform enabling the creation and deployment of sophisticated voice artificial intelligence agents. Founded in 2023 by Jordan Dearsley and Nikhil Gupta, the San Francisco-based company emerged from the founders' previous venture, Superpowered, an AI note-taking app. The pivot to Vapi was driven by Dearsley's personal project of building an AI therapist to cope with the stress of startup life, which revealed significant gaps and complexities in existing voice AI infrastructure.

Vapi's core offering is an infrastructure platform that simplifies the intricate process of building human-like voice agents for enterprises. It provides developers with flexible APIs and a software development kit (SDK) to build, test, and deploy voice agents that can handle inbound and outbound calls. The platform orchestrates a combination of third-party technologies for speech-to-text (STT), large language models (LLMs) for intelligence, and text-to-speech (TTS) for generating responses, allowing for sub-500ms response times. Clients can use Vapi's integrated models or bring their own API keys from providers like OpenAI, Deepgram, and ElevenLabs, giving them control over performance and cost.

The company targets a diverse market, including healthcare, finance, travel, and sales, serving both startups and Fortune 500 companies. Its business model is usage-based, with a primary platform fee charged per minute, supplemented by costs for the telephony and AI models used, which can be sourced through Vapi or third-party providers. This model allows businesses to scale their voice operations efficiently, addressing use cases such as customer support, appointment scheduling, and lead qualification. A Y Combinator alumnus, Vapi has secured significant investment to fuel its growth. In December 2024, the company announced a $20 million Series A funding round led by Bessemer Venture Partners, reaching a valuation of $130 million. This capital is being used to expand its engineering team and scale infrastructure to meet the surging demand for voice AI solutions.

Keywords: voice AI platform, developer tools, conversational AI, API, text-to-speech, speech-to-text, large language models, call automation, enterprise software, AI infrastructure