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Gladia announced a $16 million Series A on October 15, 2024, led by XAnge, alongside the launch of its Gladia Real-Time transcription and analytics API. The French startup said it planned to use the funding to grow beyond speech-to-text into broader audio infrastructure. In June 2026, OVH Groupe announced exclusive negotiations to acquire Gladia; that announcement did not establish that a deal had closed.
What Gladia announced in October 2024
Founded in 2022 by Jean-Louis Quéguiner and Jonathan Soto, Gladia builds audio APIs for companies developing voice-enabled products. Its October 15, 2024 announcement combined two developments: a $16 million Series A and the launch of Gladia Real-Time, an API for live transcription and audio analytics.
XAnge led the round. The announced participants were Illuminate Financial, XTX Ventures, Athletico Ventures, Gaingels, Mana Ventures, Motier Ventures, Roosh Ventures and Soma Capital. The announcement did not disclose the company’s valuation, revenue, profitability, ownership percentages, individual investor contributions or whether the financing included debt. Gladia’s funding announcement and its company-issued press release describe the round.
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What Gladia sells
Gladia is positioned as developer infrastructure, not primarily as a finished consumer transcription app. Its APIs are intended to let other products process recorded or live audio and build features on top of the resulting transcripts.
#1 Best Overall
- ENHANCED CONTEXT WITH MULTIMODAL INPUT: Capture audio, type notes, add images, and press to highlight key moments for richer context. During recording, instantly mark key moments with a single button press. Simultaneously enrich your audio by snapping photos of important documents or typing in ideas
- CHAT WITH YOUR RECORDINGS USING "ASK Plaud": Unlock deeper insights with this interactive AI. Ask questions, extract key points, draft emails, and get next-step suggestions—all grounded in your original audio for reliable, ready-to-use answers
- INTELLIGENT RECORDING WITH AI DIRECTIONAL AUDIO: Enjoy seamless, intelligent recording with Plaud Note Pro. Its AI automatically switches between call and meeting modes while recording, while directional audio and real-time spatial awareness minimize noise to capture voices with crystal clarity
- Everything Included: Includes Plaud Note Pro, magnetic case, magnetic ring, charging cable, and a free Starter Plan with 300 transcription minutes per month. Upgrade anytime in the Plaud app to Pro Plan (1,200 min/mo) or Unlimited Plan(Up to 24 hours of transcription per user per day)
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- Asynchronous transcription of pre-recorded audio and real-time streaming transcription.
- Speaker diarization, which identifies and labels different speakers.
- Language detection, multilingual processing and code-switching support.
- Translation, named-entity recognition, sentiment analysis, summaries and chapterization.
- Audio-to-LLM extraction of structured information from speech.
The company’s current product positioning, real-time product page and audio-to-LLM overview describe this broader direction. Feature availability, model behavior and pricing can differ by API mode and plan, so a buyer should verify the specific combination needed for a production workflow.
What was notable about Gladia Real-Time
At launch, Gladia said its real-time engine delivered latency below 300 milliseconds and supported more than 100 languages. The company also described live sentiment analysis, named-entity recognition and summarization, plus compatibility with SIP, VoIP, FreeSWITCH and Asterisk. It emphasized multilingual conversations and code-switching.
These are Gladia’s product claims, not independently verified guarantees for every language, audio condition or deployment. Its current product page separately advertises sub-300-millisecond latency and “fastest partials” of 103 milliseconds; those figures are also vendor claims. In evaluating a live system, distinguish the first partial transcript from a stable utterance, a final transcript and the completion of analytics. Network delay, buffering, endpointing and post-processing affect the time an application actually experiences.
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- YOUR AI PERSONAL ASSISTANT FOR EVERYDAY PRODUCTIVITY: More than a voice recorder, Pocket works as your AI personal assistant to capture, transcribe, and summarize meetings, calls, and ideas instantly. Core features are included out of the box, with optional advanced tools available for power users.
- ONE-TAP RECORDING FOR REAL-LIFE MOMENTS: Capture meetings, phone calls, and in-person conversations instantly with a simple tap, no typing, no interruptions, just effortless note-taking anywhere you go.
- SMART AI INSIGHTS & ORGANIZATION: Pocket automatically turns recordings into clear summaries, key action items and structured conversation maps so you can quickly review what matters without digging through audio.
- TURN CONVERSATIONS INTO ACTION WITH “ASK POCKET”: Don’t just record, understand. Instantly ask questions across your meetings, extract key insights and generate next steps in seconds. All grounded in your recordings, so answers stay accurate and reliable.
- MAGSAFE COMPATIBLE FOR SEAMLESS USE: Easily attach Pocket to your iPhone or other MagSafe compatible devices for convenient, hands-free recording on the go. Perfect for capturing meetings, calls, and ideas without needing to hold your device.
Gladia’s market thesis was that buyers often had to trade speed, accuracy and cost: batch processing could take longer, while real-time systems prioritized immediacy. The company presented its engine as an attempt to narrow that compromise. That is Gladia’s framing of the market, not proof that all competing services share the same limitations or that its product eliminates the trade-off.
Who the product is for
The announcement named contact-center platforms, sales-enablement software, meeting assistants, meeting recorders, note-taking applications, voice-first platforms, content and media tools, and voice-agent developers as potential customers. Their use cases include live agent assistance, call-quality monitoring, CRM enrichment, sales-call analysis, meeting notes, captions, multilingual support and compliance workflows.
Gladia said it had more than 600 customers and over 70,000 users at the time of the October 2024 announcement. Those are historical company-reported figures, not current metrics.
Rank #3
- [AI Smart Recorder for Work & Study] The AI voice recorder is ideal for meetings, interviews, lectures, and study sessions. Powered by advanced AI models, the app offers highly accurate transcription, smart summaries, and AI-generated mind maps to boost productivity. With the "Ask AI" feature, you can analyze recordings, identify key points, and gain actionable insights. Transcribe and summarize in 90+ languages, and translate conversations in real time across 91 languages to communicate more easily in international meetings, academic research, and cross-cultural settings.
- [Simple One-Touch Operation] Voice Recorder makes operation effortless — simply slide the power switch and press the red button, and recording starts in a split second. Press the same button again to save your file instantly with a time-stamped name, so you can capture important details during busy moments. For review, use A-B repeat and variable speed playback without distortion. Time-slot recording and voice activation are available in a clean, intuitive menu. Transfer files quickly via Boean app or USB-C for secure, hassle-free management.
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- [Dual Mic Clear Voice Capture] Built with dual high-sensitivity microphones and AI noise reduction, AI voice recorder captures voices from 360°. Voice-activated recording starts when people speak and pauses during silence, helping reduce unnecessary storage usage.
How Gladia said it would use the funding
The company said the capital would support research and development and its move from a speech-to-text API toward end-to-end audio infrastructure. Planned areas included additional à-la-carte models, LLM and retrieval-augmented-generation capabilities, vertical products, contact-center agent assistance and tools for extracting actionable information from calls and meetings. The funding announcement set out this strategy but did not provide detailed hiring targets or a schedule for individual product releases.
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Product and company developments since the round
Gladia’s product direction now extends from transcription toward audio-to-insight workflows. In a separate development, OVH Groupe said on June 11, 2026 that it had entered exclusive negotiations to acquire Gladia. Exclusive negotiations are not the same as a completed acquisition; the OVH Groupe announcement is the basis for describing the deal as proposed rather than closed.
If completed, an acquisition by a European cloud provider could matter to customers assessing the company’s long-term ownership and infrastructure context. The announcement alone does not establish changes to Gladia’s service, data handling, availability or roadmap. Existing and prospective customers should rely on current product documentation and contractual terms for those details.
Rank #4
- AI-POWERED TRANSCRIPTION & SUMMARIES: Plaud Note Pro is your professional voice transcriber, delivering high-accuracy transcription in 112 languages with auto speaker labels. Powered by top AI models and thousands of templates, Note Pro instantly creates structured summaries, mind maps, To-Do lists, and proposals tailored to your role and industry
- ENHANCED CONTEXT WITH MULTIMODAL INPUT: Capture audio, type notes, add images, and press to highlight key moments for richer context. During recording, instantly mark key moments with a single button press. Simultaneously enrich your audio by snapping photos of important documents or typing in ideas
- CHAT WITH YOUR RECORDINGS USING "ASK Plaud": Unlock deeper insights with this interactive AI. Ask questions, extract key points, draft emails, and get next-step suggestions—all grounded in your original audio for reliable, ready-to-use answers
- INTELLIGENT RECORDING WITH AI DIRECTIONAL AUDIO: Enjoy seamless, intelligent recording with Plaud Note Pro. Its AI automatically switches between call and meeting modes while recording, while directional audio and real-time spatial awareness minimize noise to capture voices with crystal clarity
- Everything Included: Includes Plaud Note Pro, magnetic case, magnetic ring, charging cable, and a free Starter Plan with 300 transcription minutes per month. Upgrade anytime in the Plaud app to Pro Plan (1,200 min/mo) or Unlimited Plan(Up to 24 hours of transcription per user per day)
Current public pricing and usage limits
Gladia’s help-center pricing page, accessed in August 2026, lists the following public rates. Growth rates are stated as starting prices and require a volume commitment; Enterprise pricing is customized.
| Plan | Asynchronous transcription | Real-time transcription | Qualification |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $0.61 per hour | $0.75 per hour | Public help-center rates accessed August 2026 |
| Growth | From $0.20 per hour | From $0.25 per hour | Requires a volume commitment |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom | Customized pricing, infrastructure and models |
Check the current pricing details before estimating costs. Real-time billing includes streamed silence, background noise and empty audio frames while the connection remains open. Live audio with multiple channels is billed per channel, so a two-channel call can incur charges for both streams. The multi-channel documentation explains that billing model.
A live session is limited to three hours according to the limits and concurrency documentation. Paid concurrency defaults are listed as 25 asynchronous and 30 live transcriptions, though the applicable limit can vary by plan or agreement. Gladia also described a move toward prepaid credit wallets in July 2026. For accounts affected by that transition, depleted credits or a failed or disabled auto top-up can interrupt API access; see the credit-based billing information.
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- AI personal assistant with web search for smarter productivity: More than a voice recorder, EurekaMind works as your AI personal assistant and smart note taker to capture, transcribe, and summarize meetings, calls, and interviews instantly. With built-in Ask AI, you can search the web for deeper insights beyond your recordings and chat with your AI assistant for instant follow-up questions and answers
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- Smart AI Summary & Speaker Recognition: EurekaMind automatically transforms recordings into accurate transcripts, clear AI summaries, and structured meeting notes. It identifies different speakers and highlights key action items, helping you quickly review important conversations and turn discussions into organized, actionable insights
What to validate before putting it in production
Test transcription quality on your own audio
Run representative samples rather than relying on a language-count headline. Include accents and dialects, telephone-quality recordings, background noise, overlapping speakers, specialist vocabulary, proper names, numbers, dates, compliance phrases and code-switching. Check whether the language you need is supported in real time as well as asynchronously, and whether translation or language detection behaves as required. More than 100 supported languages does not imply uniform accuracy across languages or conditions.
Measure application-level latency
Record the time to first partial, stable utterance, final transcript and any downstream analytics result. Partials may change as more audio arrives; the live API quickstart uses an is_final indicator to distinguish finalized output. An application that triggers actions on provisional text should account for corrections. See the real-time API quickstart for the streaming flow.
Check integration and reliability requirements
The documentation describes REST workflows for pre-recorded audio and WebSocket streaming for live audio. The live API supports formats including WAV/PCM, A-law and μ-law, and lists US-west and EU-west processing regions. Confirm encoding, sample rate, bit depth and channel configuration against the endpoint requirements, as well as authentication, webhooks, reconnection behavior and regional processing. The live session configuration reference and getting-started documentation provide implementation details; the API uses the x-gladia-key authentication header.
Review data governance for the exact service
Gladia’s pricing material lists GDPR, HIPAA and AICPA SOC 2 Type 2 among its security and compliance controls. That list is not a substitute for checking which product and region each control applies to or what the contract requires. Ask about retention, model-training use, regional storage and processing, deletion, subprocessors, HIPAA business-associate agreements and the handling of analytics or LLM add-ons.
Why the Series A matters
The round’s strategic importance was Gladia’s attempt to move up the software stack: from converting speech to text toward helping businesses extract and act on information from live conversations. That ambition targets operational workflows in contact centers, sales, meetings and voice applications, where latency, language handling, integration, reliability and usage economics all matter. The funding supports that plan; it does not by itself establish product superiority or commercial success.
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