Vapi is an API platform that lets developers create natural-sounding, voice-based AI assistants and attach them to phone numbers or embed them via an SDK. It is the pivot of YC-backed Superpowered, originally an AI-powered meeting notetaker founded in 2020 by Jordan Dearsley and Nikhil Gupta. Superpowered remains operational and profitable; YC reported more than 10,000 weekly users in June, though the company did not provide updated user numbers. Vapi currently strings together third-party services—Twilio for telephony, Deepgram for transcription, Daily for audio streaming, OpenAI for responses and PlayHT for text-to-speech—to enable real-time voice conversations. The startup is launching Vapi Phone and Vapi Web APIs and plans to build its own audio-to-audio models to reduce latency and improve defensibility. The team is working to lower current latencies (about 1.2–2 seconds) toward sub-1-second targets as model and infrastructure improvements continue.

Total raised

$2M

Funding rounds

1

Latest round

Seed

Latest activity

Nov 2023