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Chips Rapidus targets 2027 2nm mass production with single-wafer processing; Japan bets national semiconductor revival on one Hokkaido fab Funding EdVisorly closes $13.3M Series A for college transfer AI automation Market Together AI launches Provisioned Throughput: reserved capacity for open models at 90% below Claude Opus list Chips NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra matches closed-model performance at 10x lower cost via LangChain harness tuning Chips Budget smartphone sales collapse 22% as memory costs hit 64% of BOM amid HBM supply crunch Chips DeepSeek developing in-house inference chip to cut Nvidia, Huawei reliance Chips SiPearl Rhea CPU enters bring-up; Europe's first HPC processor on track for end-2026 Market Waymo Begins Driverless Operations in San Diego, Las Vegas, Tampa, Denver Market Oregon utility raises data center rates 29.7% under POWER Act; residential bills cut 1.3% Funding Gradium voice AI startup extends seed to $100M+ with $30M NVIDIA-backed tranche Funding SambaNova raises $1B at $11B valuation; JPMorganChase deploys SN50 for on-prem AI inference Funding Blue Origin closes first outside funding round at $130B valuation; raises $10B led by Coatue Breaking OpenAI releases GPT-5.6 Sol, Terra, Luna publicly after ending government preview limits Market Anthropic revenue hits $30B ARR, overtakes OpenAI at $25B; enterprise focus drives efficiency gap Market SK Hynix launches $28B Nasdaq IPO; HBM supplier pricing Friday as second-largest offering ever Breaking Meta launches Muse Image, native AI image model to reduce third-party dependence Funding SK Hynix launches $28B Nasdaq IPO; second-largest after SpaceX, proceeds to fund South Korea fab expansion Chips South Korea's $880B fab megacluster faces critical power shortage: needs 15–16 GW, has only 1.9 GW local supply Market Samsung chip profit surges but stock tumbles 8% as AI demand concerns override earnings beat Market SpaceX Colossus lands $26B in multi-year GPU contracts from Google, Anthropic; TSMC ships first US-made Blackwell Chips Rapidus targets 2027 2nm mass production with single-wafer processing; Japan bets national semiconductor revival on one Hokkaido fab Funding EdVisorly closes $13.3M Series A for college transfer AI automation Market Together AI launches Provisioned Throughput: reserved capacity for open models at 90% below Claude Opus list Chips NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra matches closed-model performance at 10x lower cost via LangChain harness tuning Chips Budget smartphone sales collapse 22% as memory costs hit 64% of BOM amid HBM supply crunch Chips DeepSeek developing in-house inference chip to cut Nvidia, Huawei reliance Chips SiPearl Rhea CPU enters bring-up; Europe's first HPC processor on track for end-2026 Market Waymo Begins Driverless Operations in San Diego, Las Vegas, Tampa, Denver Market Oregon utility raises data center rates 29.7% under POWER Act; residential bills cut 1.3% Funding Gradium voice AI startup extends seed to $100M+ with $30M NVIDIA-backed tranche Funding SambaNova raises $1B at $11B valuation; JPMorganChase deploys SN50 for on-prem AI inference Funding Blue Origin closes first outside funding round at $130B valuation; raises $10B led by Coatue Breaking OpenAI releases GPT-5.6 Sol, Terra, Luna publicly after ending government preview limits Market Anthropic revenue hits $30B ARR, overtakes OpenAI at $25B; enterprise focus drives efficiency gap Market SK Hynix launches $28B Nasdaq IPO; HBM supplier pricing Friday as second-largest offering ever Breaking Meta launches Muse Image, native AI image model to reduce third-party dependence Funding SK Hynix launches $28B Nasdaq IPO; second-largest after SpaceX, proceeds to fund South Korea fab expansion Chips South Korea's $880B fab megacluster faces critical power shortage: needs 15–16 GW, has only 1.9 GW local supply Market Samsung chip profit surges but stock tumbles 8% as AI demand concerns override earnings beat Market SpaceX Colossus lands $26B in multi-year GPU contracts from Google, Anthropic; TSMC ships first US-made Blackwell

Funding Wednesday, July 8, 2026 at 02:04 PM

Gradium voice AI startup extends seed to $100M+ with $30M NVIDIA-backed tranche

French voice AI startup Gradium has raised approximately $30 million in fresh funding, extending its seed round to over $100 million just seven months after launching. New investors in this extension include NVIDIA, joining prior backers Firstmark Capital and Eurazeo, which led a $70M first tranche last year. Gradium also counts French billionaires Xavier Niel and Rodolphe Saadé, and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt as early investors.

Gradium builds AI models and tools for real-time text-to-speech, speech-to-text, and voice translation, with models optimized for edge devices like laptops and phones. The startup publishes new voice models roughly monthly—a pace the cofounders say outpaces competitors' typical 6–12 month development cycles. Enterprises across healthcare, customer service, and gaming are adopting the technology. The fresh capital will fund a San Francisco office and accelerate research and product development.

Voice AI funding is accelerating across Europe: Sifted data shows AI-native voice startups raised €536M in H1 2026, up 50% from €360M in H1 2025. NVIDIA's participation signals confidence in voice as a foundational agent capability, particularly as inference moves to edge and on-prem deployments.

Sources

Primary source
sifted.eu
“Gradium extends seed to $100M+ with $30M NVIDIA-backed tranche; models publishing monthly”