Ukrainian investment fund Roosh Ventures has invested in Gladia, a company developing AI-based solutions for transcription and audio analytics. Tech entrepreneur and Roosh co-founder Serhiy Tokarev announced the investment on LinkedIn, calling Gladia “a game-changer for companies working in global markets where language diversity is a real challenge.”
The total investment reached $16 million, with the funding round led by venture capital firm XAnge joined by Illuminate Financial, XTX Ventures, Athletico Ventures, Gaingels, Mana Ventures, Motier Ventures, and Soma Capital.
Founded in 2022, Gladia aims to create a universal audio infrastructure for real-time speech processing.
“They’re developing a full-blown audio infrastructure for call centers and AI assistants, with a big focus on a multilingual tool for real-time audio transcription and analysis. It can accurately recognize over 100 languages and adapt to different accents in real time,” Serhiy Tokarev commented.
Based in Paris, Gladia plans to use the funds to advance its technology, expanding voice platform capabilities for multilingual users.
“My team and I have been using call transcription services for about two years, and it’s been a huge time-saver. But two main issues come up: while English transcription works well, it struggles with other languages. And accents? Yeah, it can’t handle those either. That’s why I’m excited about Gladia’s work; they’re really moving the technology forward,” Serhiy Tokarev added.
Gladia’s solutions enable companies to leverage real-time transcription and audio analytics. Their new engine provides speech recognition at speeds under 300 milliseconds, allowing companies to access accurate data without quality loss quickly.
Gladia currently serves over 600 companies, including Attention, Circleback, Method Financial, Recall, Sana, and VEED.IO, with more than 70,000 users on its platform. The startup also collaborates with call centers, helping them complete conversations 30% faster due to improved transcription accuracy.
Among Gladia’s main competitors are Otter.ai and Fireflies.ai. However, according to Gladia co-founder Jean-Louis Quéguiner, Gadia offers unique advantages, such as the ability to switch languages on the fly and maintain accuracy even with strong accents. “We are multilingual, and we have something called ‘code switching,’ which sets us apart. You can start in one language and seamlessly switch to another,” Queguiner noted.
Gladia’s new engine also stands out for its real-time ability to extract information from calls—such as caller sentiment, key information, and conversation summaries—in real-time. This allows Gladia to create comprehensive call or meeting transcripts and insights in under a second.
“Companies are spending valuable time and resources integrating multiple AI functions into their platforms. Our single API is compatible with all major tech stacks and protocols, including SIP, VoIP, FreeSwitch, and Asterisk. This allows seamless integration of real-time transcription and analysis into our customers’ AI platforms, so they can focus on delivering exceptional service,” co-founder and CTO of Gladia Jonathan Soto said.
The company plans to use the new capital to expand its team and drive international growth. Specifically, Gladia aims to launch a universal suite of AI tools for audio processing, including large language models (LLMs) and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG). The company is also working on integrating its solution as a call center-as-a-service (CCaaS) to automate customer support and improve agent efficiency.
“All of us in Roosh Ventures are proud to support this startup as they scale this amazing technology,” Serhiy Tokarev summarized.
Gladia was founded in Paris in 2022 by Jean-Louis Queguiner and Jonathan Soto. The company specializes in developing AI-based transcription and analytics solutions for industries where real-time language processing is critical.
Roosh Ventures is an investment fund backing promising tech startups. The fund has invested in over 40 startups in sectors like AI/ML, Gaming, Fintech, Consumer & Entertainment Apps, and Marketing & AdTech. Roosh reinvests its earnings from successful deals to fuel new, ambitious projects in the tech industry.
