Kal Freese

something new. past: brand @usebland / YC alum / once world’s 9th best barista

[Silen Naihin @silennai]

free Mimo 2.6 Pro at 320 tokens/sec

currently the best open weights model on the market

cheaper and 50% better than GPT Luna

only possible in partnership with @RunAnywhereAI

https://t.co/HlC3SrGOoI

[Kal Freese @kalfreese]

@MaxGrant__ i'm embarrassingly slow at typing so @WisprFlow has been a game changer

[Kal Freese @kalfreese]

@dangaron thanks @dangaron !

[Kal Freese @kalfreese]

new website project live - this was a fun design/build project

[Siqi Chen @blader]

introducing
═══════════ 𝚌𝚏𝚘.𝚊𝚒 ═════════════

tl;dr

1/ runway is now https://t.co/Uqg6xlaJIU

2/ you can hire @arithecfo and he can start TODAY

3/ you can give @arithecfo a test drive by replying to this thread with any ridiculous thing you want him to model for you, and he'll come back to you with a beautiful, detailed, fully wired financial model

... in 30 minutes or less

now, story time:

🧵 1/n

[Kal Freese @kalfreese]

@blader @andupoto @arithecfo team effort for sure

[Kal Freese @kalfreese]

@blader this is the product I always wanted as a founder

[Kal Freese @kalfreese]

@mchlhess next step automated phone screen

[Kal Freese @kalfreese]

Incredible work by the @usebland research team. Try it out at https://t.co/bIuE7LItcR. My favorite is Karen

[Design Arena @DesignArena]

BREAKING: Bland Speech v3 by @usebland debuts as the most human-sounding TTS model on our newest evaluation: Audio Realism Bench.

Traditional speech benchmarks increasingly struggle to separate frontier systems that all sound clean, fluent, and intelligible.

Audio Realism Bench instead asks a harder question: when two voices read the same transcript, which one sounds more like a real person?

Vetted native speakers evaluate recordings blindly across phone agents, conversational assistants, and spoken explainers, judging the subtle qualities that define human-like speech.

We also place real human recordings directly into the evaluation pool, testing whether evaluators can distinguish TTS models from actual human speech.

Bland Speech v3 takes the top spot in our initial rankings, followed by MAI-Voice-2 by @MicrosoftAI and Grok TTS by @SpaceXAI, all demonstrating important steps toward voice systems capable of sustaining genuinely human-feeling interactions.

Congratulations to the @usebland team!

[Design Arena @DesignArena]

BREAKING: Bland Speech v3 by @usebland debuts as the most human-sounding TTS model on our newest evaluation: Audio Realism Bench.

Traditional speech benchmarks increasingly struggle to separate frontier systems that all sound clean, fluent, and intelligible.

Audio Realism Bench instead asks a harder question: when two voices read the same transcript, which one sounds more like a real person?

Vetted native speakers evaluate recordings blindly across phone agents, conversational assistants, and spoken explainers, judging the subtle qualities that define human-like speech.

We also place real human recordings directly into the evaluation pool, testing whether evaluators can distinguish TTS models from actual human speech.

Bland Speech v3 takes the top spot in our initial rankings, followed by MAI-Voice-2 by @MicrosoftAI and Grok TTS by @SpaceXAI, all demonstrating important steps toward voice systems capable of sustaining genuinely human-feeling interactions.

Congratulations to the @usebland team!

[Kal Freese @kalfreese]

@LukesBeard looks incredible

[Kal Freese @kalfreese]

@Stammy @katmetaxas happy birthday!

[Bland @usebland]

Bland is in New York!

We've raised over $100M to continue building the platform that handles your business's most valuable phone calls.

Thank you @Nasdaq for sharing us with the world & the great city of New York.

[Kal Freese @kalfreese]

@N_Sportelli this is so good

[Kal Freese @kalfreese]

@usebland wonder what he think of AI for HR though

[Kal Freese @kalfreese]

BREAKING: Paul hates AI

[Bland @usebland]

Our recent $100M Series C means we can continue training our models to handle the urgent, high-risk, 45-minute phone calls that matter most.

We brought Paul back to explain what this means and why he might be headed back to Costa Rica…

[Kal Freese @kalfreese]

@usebland simple ≠ easy

[Kal Freese @kalfreese]

@georgi0u @usebland having a great team and riding on their coattails

[Paul Graham @paulg]

This may be the first funding announcement that I actually rewatched.

[Bland @usebland]

Today, we’re announcing that we’ve closed our Series C and raised $100M to continue automating the world’s most complex phone calls.

We grabbed some guy named Paul to talk about it because nobody else in the office wanted to. 🧵

[Bland @usebland]

Are you still hiring humans?