Seattle-based AI startup Nuance has closed a $50 million Series A round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with Accel, Nvidia's NVentures, South Park Commons, and Define Ventures also participating. Founded in 2025 by three former Apple researchers, the company is focused on fixing latency and unnatural interactions in current AI voice assistants and virtual humans. Co-founder and CEO Fangchang Ma said many existing systems stitch together speech-to-text, large language models, and text-to-speech components, which can introduce delays and miss details such as real-time reactions and micro-expressions in human communication. Nuance said it plans to build a single foundational model that can handle audio and video input as well as audio-video output, trained on real audiovisual data collected internally and provided by data partners. The company remains in the product development stage and plans to release a public research preview later this year. It is targeting use cases including AI interviews, public speaking practice, language learning, and enterprise sales and customer service. Nuance currently has a team of eight, and said the new funding will mainly go toward expanding its R&D staff and hiring more go-to-market and commercialization talent.
Seattle-based AI startup Nuance has completed a $50 million Series A round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from Accel, Nvidia's NVentures, South Park Commons, and Define Ventures, according to BlockBeats.
The company was founded in 2025. It previously raised a $10 million seed round in July last year.
Founded by three former Apple researchers
Nuance was co-founded by three former Apple researchers. The company is focused on addressing lag and unnatural interactions in existing AI voice assistants and virtual humans.
Co-founder and CEO Fangchang Ma said many AI virtual human systems currently stitch together speech-to-text, large language models, and text-to-speech modules. That setup can create latency and also struggles to capture details in human communication, including immediate reactions and micro-expressions.
Single-model approach for audio and video
Nuance plans to use a single model at the foundation level to handle audio and video input as well as audio-video output. It also plans to train that model with real audiovisual data collected in-house and supplied by data partners.
The company is still in the product development stage and plans to release a public research preview later this year. It sees applications in AI interviews, speech practice, language learning, and enterprise use cases such as sales and customer service.
Funding to support hiring
Nuance currently has a team of eight. The company said the new financing will mainly be used to expand its research and development team and hire more talent for marketing and commercialization.
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