Voice AI company Deepgram is acquiring Daily, the maker of one of the most popular open-source frameworks, Pipecat, the companies announced Thursday. The deal amount was not disclosed, but both sides said Pipecat will remain open-source.
The acquisition will likely give Deepgram a deeper understanding of real-time voice and video infrastructure. Pipecat is a framework that manages voice and video streams alongside speech-to-text, large language models, and text-to-speech models while reducing latency. Its maker, Daily, provides hosted infrastructure for voice and video calls.
Daily co-founder Kwindla Kramer said that around the time GPT-4 came out, the company began experimenting with AI-to-human voice and text communication, which eventually resulted in Pipecat. He noted there had been a lot of acquisition interest but favored Deepgram CEO Scott Stephenson’s commitment to keeping Pipecat open-source forever, and said the engineering cultures matched.
"Scott was super committed to Pipecat being open-source and vendor-neutral forever," Kramer told TechCrunch. "If you sit in the middle of an ecosystem that's growing very fast, and have many parts of that ecosystem that are genuinely the best from your company, then everything being as open as possible is like a commercial advantage."
Stephenson said Deepgram had long wanted to work in open source and saw an orchestration framework for agents as a potential area, driving the partnership. “We want to open up the ecosystem so everybody can build voice agents. It's great if you're using Deepgram models, but I want you to be using the best models for your use case,” he said.
The acquisition lets developers build agents with expressivity and end-to-end speech systems by plugging in different models and a context bus, Stephenson added. For Deepgram, the deal also opens exploration beyond voice through Pipecat's real-time communication capabilities.
Deepgram is also launching Real-Time Context Standard (RCS), an open protocol for voice agents co-developed with the Pipecat team. The protocol defines metadata such as context from audio, instructions for language models on using those signals, and guidance on response tone.
Both companies were in the same Y Combinator batch in 2016. Daily has raised over $62 million in funding from investors including Tiger Global, Highfield Capital, Nat Friedman, Lachy Groom and Kevin Weil, according to PitchBook data. Deepgram reached unicorn status earlier this year with a $130 million Series C round.
The voice AI sector has drawn significant investment on both the model and infrastructure sides. Model makers ElevenLabs, Gradium, and Fish Audio have raised millions, while infrastructure companies LiveKit and Vapi have raised multi-million-dollar rounds this year.
Analysis
Why this matters
- Consolidates voice AI infrastructure around an open-source framework, potentially lowering barriers for developers building voice agents.
- Keep Pipecat open-source and vendor-neutral may strengthen the ecosystem and attract more contributions, countering proprietary alternatives.
- The deal positions Deepgram to expand beyond voice into broader real-time AI applications through Pipecat's multimodal capabilities.
Background
Voice AI has become a hot sector, with startups on both the model side (ElevenLabs, Fish Audio) and infrastructure side (LiveKit, Vapi) raising substantial funding. Deepgram, a unicorn, and Daily, backed by Tiger Global and others, both came out of Y Combinator's 2016 batch. Pipecat emerged from Daily's experimentation with AI-to-human communication after GPT-4's release and has become a popular open-source framework for managing real-time voice and video pipelines with AI components.
Key perspectives
- Kwindla Kramer (Daily co-founder): Favored Deepgram's commitment to keeping Pipecat open-source and vendor-neutral forever, calling it both a personal commitment and a commercial advantage for a company in a fast-growing ecosystem.
- Scott Stephenson (Deepgram CEO): Wants to open up the ecosystem so everyone can build voice agents using the best models for their use case, even if Deepgram needs to improve in some areas.
What to watch
- Adoption and contribution activity around Pipecat and the new Real-Time Context Standard (RCS) as indicators of ecosystem health.
- How Deepgram balances open-source commitments with its own commercial model products, and whether competitors like LiveKit and Vapi respond.
- Potential expansion of Pipecat into non-voice real-time communication domains, which Deepgram hinted at.
Checked
12 claims in this story checked against 1 source: 11 supported.
Show each claim
- SupportedDeepgram is acquiring Daily to bolster its voice AI infrastructure.TechCrunch: “Deepgram acquires Pipecat-maker Daily to bolster its voice AI infrastructure.”
- SupportedPipecat will remain open-source, according to the companies.TechCrunch: “The companies didn’t disclose the deal amount but said that they will keep Pipecat open-source.”
- SupportedKramer cites Stephenson’s commitment to keeping Pipecat vendor-neutral.TechCrunch: ““Scott was super committed to Pipecat being open-source and vendor-neutral forever.”
- Partly supportedDeepgram and Daily jointly announced the acquisition on Thursday.TechCrunch: “The company said on Thursday that it is acquiring Daily”
- SupportedKramer said, “Scott was super committed to Pipecat being open-source and vendor-neutral forever.”TechCrunch: ““Scott was super committed to Pipecat being open-source and vendor-neutral forever.”
- SupportedKramer said, “If you sit in the middle of an ecosystem that's growing very fast, and have many parts of that ecosystem that are genuinely the best from your company, then everything being as open as possible is like a commercial advantage.”TechCrunch: “If you sit in the middle of an ecosystem that’s growing very fast, and have many parts of that ecosystem that are genuinely the best from your company, then everything being as open as possible is like a commercial advantage,”
- SupportedStephenson said, “We want to open up the ecosystem so everybody can build voice agents. It’s great if you’re using Deepgram models, but I want you to be using the best models for your use case.”TechCrunch: ““We want to open up the ecosystem so everybody can build voice agents. It’s great if you’re using Deepgram models, but I want you to be using the best models for your use case.”
- SupportedThe acquisition will likely give Deepgram a deeper understanding of real-time voice and video infrastructure.TechCrunch: “With Pipecat, Deepgram will likely gain a deeper understanding of real-time voice and video infrastructure.”
- SupportedPipecat manages voice and video streams alongside speech-to-text, large language models and text-to-speech models while reducing latency.TechCrunch: “Pipecat is a framework that manages voice and video streams along with other pieces in the pipeline, like speech-to-text (STT), large language models, and text-to-speech (TTS) models while reducing latency.”
- SupportedDeepgram is launching the Real-Time Context Standard, an open voice-agent protocol co-developed with the Pipecat team, that defines audio context, language-model instructions and response guidance.TechCrunch: “Deepgram is also launching Real-Time Context Standard (RCS), an open protocol for voice agents that it co-developed with the Pipecat team. The protocol defines metadata like context from the audio, like a whisper, instructions for a language model on how it can use those signals, and guidance on how the response should sound.”
- SupportedDaily has raised over $62 million from investors including Tiger Global, Highfield Capital, Nat Friedman, Lachy Groom and Kevin Weil, according to PitchBook data.TechCrunch: “Daily has raised over $62 million in funding to date from investors such as Tiger Global, Highfield Capital, Nat Friedman, Lachy Groom and Kevin Weil, according to PitchBook data.”
- SupportedDeepgram reached unicorn status earlier this year with a $130 million Series C round.TechCrunch: “Earlier this year, Deepgram reached unicorn status with a $130 million Series C round .”
