Serhii Tokarev on Roosh Ventures’ Strategic Investment in AI Startup Gladia
Serhii Tokarev, co-founder of Ukrainian investment fund Roosh Ventures, recently announced the fund’s investment in Gladia, a French company specializing in AI-driven transcription and audio analytics. Highlighting the startup’s innovative solutions, Tokarev called Gladia a “game-changer” for businesses operating in multilingual markets, where language diversity and accents often pose significant challenges.
The funding round, which totaled $16 million, was led by XAnge and joined by several other investors, including Illuminate Financial, XTX Ventures, and Soma Capital.
Gladia’s Vision: Multilingual Real-Time Audio Processing
Established in 2022 by Jean-Louis Quéguiner and Jonathan Soto, Gladia focuses on creating a universal audio infrastructure that delivers real-time transcription and analytics. Its tools can process over 100 languages and adapt to various accents seamlessly. “They’re building a comprehensive solution for call centers and AI assistants, enabling real-time multilingual transcription and analysis,” Serhii Tokarev stated.
Gladia’s engine processes speech with remarkable speed, delivering results in under 300 milliseconds. This efficiency ensures that businesses can extract actionable insights instantly, without compromising quality. According to Tokarev, such advancements address a significant gap in existing transcription technologies, which often struggle with languages and accents outside English.
Enhancing Business Efficiency
Gladia’s solutions are already being utilized by over 600 companies, including Attention, Circleback, and Sana. The platform serves more than 70,000 users globally. Its capabilities have proven particularly valuable in call centers, where improved transcription accuracy has enabled conversations to conclude 30% faster.
What sets Gladia apart from competitors like Otter.ai and Fireflies.ai is its ability to support “code-switching,” a feature that allows users to switch between languages mid-conversation without losing transcription accuracy. “This is particularly critical for global businesses, as it ensures consistent quality regardless of language or accent,” noted Gladia co-founder Jean-Louis Quéguiner.
Beyond transcription, the platform extracts valuable insights from calls in real time, including caller sentiment and key conversation details. This capability helps businesses enhance their decision-making and streamline operations.
Expansion Plans
The $16 million investment will enable Gladia to expand its team and accelerate its international growth. The company plans to develop a suite of AI-powered tools for audio processing, incorporating technologies like large language models (LLMs) and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG). Additionally, it aims to integrate its platform as a call center-as-a-service (CCaaS) solution, enhancing customer support through automation and improved agent efficiency.
Jonathan Soto, Gladia’s CTO, emphasized the platform’s seamless integration capabilities: “Our single API supports major tech stacks and protocols like SIP, VoIP, and Asterisk, making it easy for companies to embed real-time transcription and analytics into their systems.”
Roosh Ventures’ Strategic Focus
Roosh Ventures has been a significant player in the tech startup ecosystem, investing in over 40 companies across sectors such as AI/ML, Gaming, Fintech, and Marketing. By backing innovative solutions like Gladia, the fund reinforces its mission to drive technological progress in industries requiring advanced AI tools.
Serhii Tokarev reflected on the importance of this investment: “For two years, my team and I have relied on transcription services, but we’ve encountered issues with non-English languages and accents. Gladia’s approach directly addresses these problems, making it a transformative solution for businesses worldwide.”
