Rime Secures $24M Series A to Refine Enterprise Voice AI

Founded in 2022 by Lily Clifford, Brooke Larson, and Ares Geovanos, Rime differentiates itself by utilizing a phoneme-based architecture. This technical choice allows the models to adapt to specific brand terminology and complex industry jargon without requiring extensive retraining. The startup currently serves clients across healthcare, fintech, and airlines, counting Mayo Clinic, Dialpad, Upstart, and Asurion among its enterprise users.

Despite the recent influx of capital, CEO Lily Clifford remains critical of current industry standards, noting that most voice AI agents still feel like rebranded versions of traditional IVR systems. To bridge this gap, Rime is transitioning from a pipeline of separate speech-to-text and text-to-speech models toward integrated speech-to-speech systems. This shift is designed to reduce latency, improve turn-taking, and minimize reliance on complex orchestration layers.

With 35 employees currently on staff, the company plans to use the fresh funding to scale its engineering and model development teams. The expansion follows the appointment of former Meta and NVIDIA researcher Rafael Valle as Chief Scientist. M13 partner Morgan Blumberg, who led the funding round, will join Rime’s board of directors to support the company’s push into regulated environments.