The deep dive · Private · Read November 3, 2026

Deepgram

A San Francisco speech AI company that sells the ears and voice inside other firms' voice agents. It says it passed $100 million in recurring revenue and was cash-flow positive before raising at $1.3 billion.

Deepgram, Aug 12, 2026

Valuation: $1.3B set by the $130M Series C in Jan 2026, led by AVP. The first valuation the company has published.
Raised: Over $215M by Jan 2026; a Singapore state fund added an undisclosed sum in Aug 2026.
Revenue: $100M+ ARR the company's own figure in Aug 2026; no growth rate or audited revenue published.
Watch: Buying Daily the Pipecat maker, announced Oct 29, 2026, to build a full voice agent platform. Price not disclosed.
AI: Is the product trains its own speech-to-text and text-to-speech models, sold by the minute or character to 200,000+ developers.
Liquidity: No tender found no company-run staff share sale has been announced or reported.
Hiring: 70 → 57 remote listings since Oct 10.

01 · The business

Usage-priced voice plumbing for other companies' apps.

Deepgram charges per minute of audio for speech-to-text (Nova-3, Flux), per 1,000 characters for text-to-speech (Aura-2, Flux TTS), and per minute for its Voice Agent API. Developers start on pay as you go with $200 of free credit; Growth plans prepay from $4,000 a year; Enterprise gets custom prices and can self-host on its own NVIDIA GPUs.

Deepgram pricing, checked Nov 3, 2026

The moat, in three parts

1
Years of production audio
Over 50,000 years of audio processed and more than one trillion words transcribed, for 1,400 organizations and 200,000+ developers.
Deepgram, Aug 18, 2026
2
Runs where regulated buyers need it
Models can run in Deepgram's cloud, a customer's VPC or fully on premises on NVIDIA GPUs, which matters for healthcare, government and banks.
Deepgram pricing, checked Nov 3, 2026
3
Owning the open-source agent framework
Buying Daily brings Pipecat, an open framework with 200+ integrations and almost 400 contributors, which stays free under its BSD licence.
TNW, Oct 29, 2026

The competition, by what it is worth

ElevenLabs
$22.0Bprivate, Sep 30
NICE
$6.63Blisted, Oct 30 close
SoundHound AI
$1.90Blisted, Oct 30 close
Deepgram
$1.30BSeries C, Jan 13

Private values are the last reported round; they can be stale. Listed values are market value. Bars start at zero.

02 · Funding

Every round, and what its terms give away.

Deepgram is private, so there is no share price. What its investors paid, and on what terms, is the closest thing to one.

$1.30B
latest valuation, Series C Jan 13: $215M
raised in all: $100M
ARR, as of Aug 12

Company said it ended 2024 cash-flow positive; CEO said it was cash-flow positive again in 2025. No profit figures published.

Deepgram, Aug 12, 2026 (ARR); TechCrunch, Jan 13, 2026 (raised, cash flow)

5 rounds and offers, newest first

Aug 18
Series C extension
Led by EDBI (Singapore, SG Growth Capital)
Strategic investment tied to a new APAC headquarters in Singapore; size and price not disclosed.
Deepgram, Aug 18, 2026
Jan 13
Series C$130M at $1.30B
Led by AVP. About 10% of the company, if all new shares
Insiders Alkeon, In-Q-Tel, Madrona, Tiger, Wing, YC and BlackRock funds joined; the Form D shows $143.2M sold to 27 investors.
Deepgram, Jan 13, 2026; SEC Form D
Nov 29
Series B extension$47M
Led by Madrona Venture Group
Citi Ventures and Alkeon joined; brought the Series B to $72M. CEO called it the highest valuation yet, without a number.
TechCrunch, Nov 29, 2022
Feb 4
Series B$25M
Led by Tiger Global
Wing, Citi Ventures, SAP.io and NVIDIA joined. Followed an undisclosed In-Q-Tel investment in June 2020.
Voicebot.ai, Feb 4, 2021
Mar 18
Series A$12M
Led by Wing VC
NVIDIA, Y Combinator, Compound and SAP.iO joined.
Wing VC, Mar 18, 2020

Round-terms checks

No flags found · last raise 9 months ago

Down or flat round?No sign of one. Earlier valuations were never published, but the CEO called the 2022 price a record, and the 2026 round set the first public mark at $1.3B.TechCrunch, Nov 2022; Deepgram, Jan 2026
Clear
How much the last round sold$130M at $1.3B post-money: about 10% of the company. The Form D's $143.2M sold would be about 11%.SEC Form D, Jan 13, 2026
Clear
Time since the last raiseAbout ten months since the Series C, extended in Aug 2026. The CEO said it was cash-flow positive and not looking for money.TechCrunch, Jan 13, 2026
Clear
Unusual terms (preferences, ratchets, warrants)?Not disclosed. The Form D lists equity with no sales commissions; it does not show preference terms.SEC Form D, Jan 13, 2026
Open
Who ledA new outside lead, AVP, with existing investors following and new strategic money from Twilio, SAP, ServiceNow Ventures and Citi Ventures.Deepgram, Jan 13, 2026
Clear
Can staff sell shares?No company tender offer or staff secondary sale has been announced or reported. Any trading on outside marketplaces is not a company programme.Revenue Memo funding history, checked Nov 3, 2026
Open
Layoffs in the last 12 months?None found in news searches for Nov 2025 to Nov 2026. Cuts were reported in 2023, outside this window.Still Remote search, Nov 3, 2026
Clear

Clear: checked, nothing found. Flag: found, with the source. Open: could not be checked.

Going public

No filing reported

03 · Footnote flags

What the record says, and what we think it means.

The fact is the source's. The read, in italics, is ours.

01
Watch
Buying Daily, the maker of Pipecat.
Announced Oct 29, 2026; price not disclosed. Daily raised over $62M per PitchBook data cited by TechCrunch, and its co-founder becomes head of open source.
The biggest bet yet: moving from selling speech models to selling a whole agent platform. It may put Deepgram closer to customers who build agents on it.
TNW, Oct 29, 2026
02
Good
Passed $100 million in recurring revenue.
Stated by the company with the Flux TTS launch on Aug 12, 2026.
That puts the Jan 2026 price at about 13 times ARR, modest for AI. ARR is the company's own measure, and no growth rate was given.
Deepgram, Aug 12, 2026
03
Good
Cash-flow positive before the big raise.
Deepgram said it ended 2024 cash-flow positive with 400+ enterprise customers; the CEO said 2025 was cash-flow positive too.
Rare for an AI model company, and it means the Series C was growth money, not a lifeline. These are company statements, not audited numbers.
Deepgram release via DRJ, Jan 29, 2025
04
Neutral
The filing shows more money than the headline.
The Series C Form D reports $143.2M sold of a $148.0M offering to 27 investors, first sale Dec 5, 2025, versus the $130M announced.
Likely later closes or extra investors; the gap is small. The filing's revenue range box says decline to disclose.
SEC Form D, Jan 13, 2026
05
Neutral
Singapore's state fund invested and an APAC base is coming.
EDBI extended the Series C in Aug 2026; Deepgram named an APAC general manager and said APAC API requests grew 96% year over year.
Points to international hiring. The amount is undisclosed, so it says little about price.
Deepgram, Aug 18, 2026
06
Neutral
Bought a drive-thru voice AI startup.
OfOne, a YC-backed restaurant ordering platform, now anchors Deepgram for Restaurants; terms not disclosed.
A first move into selling finished products to one industry, not just APIs. Small deal, but it shows the direction.
Deepgram, Jan 13, 2026
07
Neutral
Backed by In-Q-Tel since 2020.
In-Q-Tel invested in June 2020 and joined again in the 2026 Series C.
In-Q-Tel invests for US national security agencies, which hints at government demand for private, on-premises speech AI. Some candidates may weigh that either way.
Voicebot.ai, Feb 2021; Deepgram, Jan 2026

04 · Who gets paid most

Sales is paid 50% over market. Data, 9% over.

Still Remote data, daily since Oct 10

Posted pay against the same level at other remote employers

Sales 6

+50%

Marketing 6

+30%

Engineering 11

+14%

Data 6

+9%

Compared level by level against 400+ remote employers, then averaged. Number of posted ranges beside each team.

AI and ML listings, Oct 10 to Nov 2

11 → 10−9%

Remote listings, same days

70 → 57−19%

We save every company's roles, pay by team and level, AI share and churn every day, so each month this page can say more. Sparklines use their own scale.

05 · Built for the agentic era?

Can AI agents do business with Deepgram?

We checked the agent payment programs, developer docs and site rules an AI assistant would meet.

Our verdict

Built for agents. Docs MCP server, a CLI with its own MCP server, llms.txt everywhere, and an open robots.txt.

Still Remote read

LiveAnnounced, not confirmed live

An MCP server agents can call
The docs point AI clients such as Claude Code and Cursor to a hosted MCP server at developers.deepgram.com/_mcp/server.
checked Nov 3, 2026
Yes
Agents can use the API directly
The dg command-line tool has 28 commands and a built-in MCP server (stdio or SSE), plus a skills marketplace for coding tools.
checked Nov 3, 2026
Yes
Docs that AI tools can read
llms.txt on both deepgram.com and the docs site; docs tell agents to append .md to any page for clean Markdown.
checked Nov 3, 2026
Yes
Lets AI crawlers read its site
No AI bots named. deepgram.com allows all bots except /api/; the docs site closes only /api/fern-docs/.
checked Nov 3, 2026
Yes
Sells agents, not just models
A Voice Agent API handles listening, thinking and speaking over one connection, priced from $0.075 a minute.
checked Nov 3, 2026
Yes
An open standard for voice agents
Real-Time Context Standard 0.1, an alpha spec built with the Pipecat team, passes tone of voice through the agent pipeline. A Voice Agent Platform has no launch date.
audioXpress, Oct 30, 2026
Announced

05 · Inside the company

Where Deepgram puts AI to work.

AI and ML job titles, share of open remote listings

Deepgram

17.5%

Every company we track

6.3%

10 of 57 Deepgram listings on Nov 2. Scale 0% to 20%.

1
AI use is part of the job
A current posting says every team member is expected to use advanced AI tools, and performance is judged partly on how well they apply AI.
Deepgram job posting via Built In, checked Nov 3, 2026
2
It plans for AI agents as customers
The same posting describes coding agents that find Deepgram, pick it, write the integration and call the API, often with no human involved.
Deepgram job posting via Built In, checked Nov 3, 2026
3
Trains and serves its own models
Nova-3, Flux and Flux TTS are built in house and served on its own GPU fleet, with Dell and Penguin deploying Blackwell servers in 2026.
StorageNewsletter, Mar 19, 2026

06 · What the hiring says

Fewer listings than on Sep 9, led by engineering.

Remote listings on its board, dailyAxis starts at zero

Listings as the board shows them, so a title posted in several places counts each time. Team counts are open roles, repeated titles once.

14 of 57

roles are engineering

sales roles, the next biggest team

countries named in its remote roles, led by United States

new roles in the last 7 days

06 · From its own channel

What Deepgram puts on its own channel.

Short videos from Deepgram's official YouTube channel, played here. We only use a channel that links deepgram.com and carries the company's name.

Meta Cuts 600 AI jobs... AI CEO reacts
287 views
AI CEO reacts to AI Bubble clip on Stephen Colbert
1 thousand views
Why Most Voice AI Agents Fail | Deepgram
639 views
AI's Latest Cancer Research Hypothesis Contributions
1 thousand views
We Pivoted into Freight Automation — and Ended Up Building Voice Agents Before It Was Cool
199 views
We Started with Synthetic Data : Now We Automate Freight
198 views
Voice AI Connect & Live Hub : Seamless Integration of Bots, Telephony, and Speech Services
286 views

From Deepgram on YouTube. These are the company's own marketing, not a look inside.

07 · Private scenario builder

What has to be true for $1.3 billion to hold?

The starting revenue is Deepgram's own reported figure. A way to think, not a forecast, and not investment advice.

Revenue today$100M

Over $100M in annual recurring revenue, stated by Deepgram in its Flux TTS release (Aug 12, 2026). Company figure, not audited.

Growth a year+40%

No growth rate has been published.

Competition

Economy

Investors pay per $1 of revenue$13

At the Series C price, about $13 per $1.

Your equity at that price

Worth in two years, in your world

$2.55B

+96% vs the $1.30B Series C

$196M revenue, growing +40% a year after competition and the economy

Series C $1.30B

$0$3.12B

Up round territory

At 13x, Deepgram needs $100 million of revenue to be worth $1.3 billion. Your world gets there with $196 million, so the next round likely prices above the last.

Your equity, two years out

$196,000

$100,000 of equity valued at the $1.30B Series C price would be worth about $196,000 on paper in this world, before dilution from new rounds, taxes and vesting. Private shares only turn into cash at a sale, an IPO or a tender offer.

A way to think, not a forecast, and not investment advice.

Deepgram, Jan 13, 2026; Aug 12, 2026

08 · Where it looks headed

The signals, and which way they push.

Tailwind
Scale and cash flow.
Over $100M ARR by Aug 2026 and cash-flow positive in 2024 and 2025, by its own account.
Deepgram, Aug 2026; TechCrunch, Jan 2026high
Tailwind
Agent startups build on it.
Decagon, Sierra, Vapi and Granola are named customers, and Twilio, SAP and ServiceNow invested in the Series C.
Deepgram, Aug 12, 2026high
Headwind
A much bigger voice rival.
ElevenLabs was valued at $22B in a Sept 2026 staff tender, many times Deepgram's $1.3B, and also sells voice agents.
ElevenLabs, Sep 30, 2026medium
Headwind
Selling a platform can annoy customers.
A Deepgram agent platform would overlap with agent builders who buy its models; Pipecat's planned foundation includes competitors on its steering committee.
TNW, Oct 29, 2026medium

09 · Bold predictions

Where Deepgram ends up, if we had to bet.

Our calls, not facts. Each one is tied to something that already happened, so you can judge the reasoning.

1
Deepgram is a listed company by 2031.
Coin flip 50%IPO
It is cash-flow positive with over $100M ARR, a profile public investors like. But no filing or staff tender has been reported, and it keeps buying companies, not preparing a listing in public.
TechCrunch, Jan 2026; Deepgram, Aug 2026
2
A large software or communications company buys Deepgram before it lists.
Coin flip 50%M&A
Twilio, SAP and ServiceNow already hold stakes and distribute voice products. At about 13 times ARR it is far cheaper to buy than ElevenLabs.
Deepgram, Jan 13, 2026
3
Agent platform sales become a large share of Deepgram revenue, beyond raw transcription.
Likely 72%Products
It bought OfOne and Daily, sells a Voice Agent API, and is building a Voice Agent Platform around Pipecat. Each step moves up from per-minute models.
audioXpress, Oct 30, 2026
4
Big AI labs make basic speech recognition a near-free feature, squeezing per-minute prices.
Coin flip 50%AI
Deepgram already sells Nova-3 at under a cent a minute. Its answer is speed, on-premises deployment and conversation features like turn detection.
Deepgram pricing, checked Nov 3, 2026
5
Deepgram stays the developer and enterprise infrastructure pick while ElevenLabs leads in creator and branded voices.
Likely 72%Competition
Its named customers are agent builders and enterprises, and it sells self-hosting for regulated buyers. ElevenLabs is far larger and growing in agents, so the overlap will widen.
Deepgram, Aug 2026; ElevenLabs, Sep 2026

Read by the Still Remote research agent on November 3, 2026 from the sources linked on this page. Facts and scenarios only, not investment advice.

Deepgram

Usage-priced voice plumbing for other companies' apps.

Every round, and what its terms give away.

What the record says, and what we think it means.

Buying Daily, the maker of Pipecat.

Passed $100 million in recurring revenue.

Cash-flow positive before the big raise.

The filing shows more money than the headline.

Singapore's state fund invested and an APAC base is coming.

Bought a drive-thru voice AI startup.

Backed by In-Q-Tel since 2020.

Sales is paid 50% over market. Data, 9% over.

Can AI agents do business with Deepgram?

Where Deepgram puts AI to work.

Fewer listings than on Sep 9, led by engineering.

What Deepgram puts on its own channel.

What has to be true for $1.3 billion to hold?

The signals, and which way they push.

Where Deepgram ends up, if we had to bet.