Paris-based startup Gradium raises $100 million in investment with NVIDIA support

01:28 / 10.07.2026·50·Technology

The French startup Gradium, which is developing voice technologies in the field of AI, has successfully closed its first investment round. The company managed to raise a total of $100 million with the participation of tech giants like NVIDIA. This event highlights the rapid growth of the European AI market and the increasing demand for voice interfaces. This is reported by Techcrunch.com reports .

Gradium initially launched last December with $70 million in funding. In this new round, alongside NVIDIA, influential investors such as Eric Schmidt and Xavier Niel also supported the project. These funds will allow the company to strengthen its position in the global market and expand its technological infrastructure.

Global competition and new milestones

The company's management announced that it will direct a portion of the raised capital toward opening a new office in the San Francisco Bay Area. This strategic step will facilitate close collaboration with industry leaders like Anthropic, Google, Meta, and OpenAI, and help attract top talent. While Paris is a European hub for AI, a presence in Silicon Valley is essential for global recognition.

Gradium founder Neil Zeghidour is an experienced researcher who previously worked at organizations like Google Brain, DeepMind, and Facebook. The team under his leadership is currently working on creating voice models that operate with ultra-low latency. This technology eliminates the awkward pauses that occur when interacting with AI, making the conversation feel as natural as a live dialogue.

Industry position and partnerships

Competition in the voice AI market is currently very intense. Gradium will have to compete with major rivals such as ElevenLabs and Google's Gemini project. Nevertheless, the French startup has achieved significant success in a short time. In particular, the famous French automotive giant Renault has already become a Gradium client.

According to ixbt.com, Gradium's technological solutions are becoming attractive not only to ordinary users but also to large industrial enterprises. The speed and accuracy of voice assistants are expected to revolutionize the automotive industry, customer service, and smart device management in the future. NVIDIA's interest in this project indicates that the startup's computing power and algorithms have high potential.