In a major boost for AI-driven voice tech, Cartesia AI, co-founded by Stanford AI Lab alumni Karan Goel and Albert Gu, has secured $100 million in funding from top investors including Kleiner Perkins, Index Ventures, Lightspeed, and NVIDIA. 

The round fuels the launch of **Sonic-3**, hailed as the world's fastest and most natural real-time conversational AI model.

#### Key Highlights of Sonic-3:
- **Unmatched Speed**: 90ms model latency and 190ms end-to-end response time, outpacing competitors for seamless, human-like interactions.
- **Emotional Depth**: Captures laughter, full emotional range, and natural cadence, making conversations feel truly lifelike.
- **Global Reach**: Supports 42 languages, enabling diverse applications from customer service to multilingual agents.

What sets Sonic-3 apart? Unlike Transformer-based models (used by most rivals), it leverages **State Space Models (SSMs)**, a paradigm pioneered by the founders via breakthroughs like S4 and Mamba at Stanford. SSMs mimic human memory, retaining conversation context efficiently without "rewinding" every exchange, slashing compute needs while boosting performance.

Already powering millions of monthly interactions for enterprises like ServiceNow, Cresta, and Decagon, Sonic-3 is free to try or demo at cartesia.ai. Cartesia's bold guarantee: If it doesn't outperform your current voice AI, CEO Karan Goel pledges $5K to your chosen charity.

Cartesia AI Raises $100M, Unveils Sonic-3 for Ultra-Fast, Natural Voice Conversations