dsa

aspiring roger federer of tech
builder @livekit @x @23andme yc07
investor @sundayrobotics @coreauto

[dsa @dsa]

Today is a day I’ll never forget.

I grew up in Cupertino.
My dad was a tech founder in the 80s/90s.
I was in YC S07.
LiveKit is my 5th company.
The first 4 didn’t work out.

I’ve had a lot of advantages — it still took 20 years to get here.

Founders: keep taking shots.

[LiveKit @livekit]

We learn to speak before we learn to read.

Voice is the most natural interface we have.

We just raised a $100M to make building voice AI as easy as a web app.

[dsa @dsa]

Amazing model but fyi a whale isn’t a fish

[Fish Audio @FishAudio]

$52M seed round. 15M+ users. But this is what we're most proud of yet.

Introducing Drama 3: the most emotive and controllable TTS model in the world

And yes, it's open-weight.

You can now control how even a single word should sound, change its tone, and shift your voice mid-sentence.

Uncle Roger was impressed too.

Try it here:

https://t.co/4nbz4sQ4yy

Comment “DRAMA” within the next 48 hours for 1 month free.

If you're an enterprise your first month is on us:

https://t.co/jBXXZSAg0p

[Chris Sev @chrissev]

good customer support is still a moat

switching over fully from elevenlabs thanks to the ridiculous speed from @codeSTACKr and @livekit

[LiveKit @livekit]

Know exactly what your agent can do, catch gaps before customers do, and test any model against your own scenarios before you switch. Your agent has a QA team now.

Try LiveKit Simulations free through October: https://t.co/dx8DzqXb0s

[dsa @dsa]

based

[David Chen @chenosaurus]

On my way to the @LiveKit company retreat in Cancun. Half my suitcase is filled with robots and robot accesories. 🤖

[LiveKit @livekit]

Your whole voice stack, free for a year on LiveKit.

$10K in Cloud credits + a year of Scale + $7K in partner inference credits ($1K each: @googlegemma, @DeepgramAI, @inworld , @rimelabs , @FishAudio, @AssemblyAI, @GradiumAI.)

One workspace. No provider keys.

Apply now: https://t.co/UnWpnNyCqg

[LiveKit @livekit]

GPT-Live-1 @openaidevs is now supported in LiveKit Agents. It's full-duplex, so it listens and speaks at the same time instead of taking turns, and it hands reasoning and tool calls off to a backend model so a slow lookup doesn't leave your agent sitting in dead air.

Same `AgentSession` API. New plugin: `GPTLiveModel`.

Get started: https://t.co/igKmgICCAk

[LiveKit @livekit]

LiveKit Connectors are generally available today.

They bring calls from @twilio Programmable Voice and @WhatsApp Business Calling into a LiveKit room as a regular participant, so your agent can answer there with no SIP trunk to provision and nothing new to host.

Read the full article: https://t.co/Yvj1Crwg3r

[dsa @dsa]

@protozog Randomly saw it last night on the way to dinner, was such a cool moment

[Inworld AI @inworld]

Realtime TTS-2 is GA today, now the #1 model on Artificial Analysis and fastest TTS in the world of its class.

The research preview got far more usage than expected. That experience went back into research and today's GA model represents the biggest leap in Inworld's history.

[Matt Herzog @protozog]

LiveKit in the wild 👀

[Pabs • Robot Everest @pabsclimbs]

Introducing Pemba

The first robot to attempt Everest

This fall powered by @livekit, with support from @AskVenice , @eastworlds_io and Reflex

[dsa @dsa]

Per-minute metering is an artifact of the telecom industry. Per-second is agent-native.

[LiveKit @livekit]

It's now less expensive to build and run agents on LiveKit.

Agent sessions, recording, WebRTC, and SIP are billed per-second with a 10-second minimum. A 14-second outbound call costs 14 seconds, not a full minute.

No code changes. Just a smaller bill.

Read the full post: https://t.co/83rDeUnie6

[LiveKit @livekit]

Protect sensitive data without giving up voice agent observability.

LiveKit PII Redaction automatically removes personal information from transcripts and recordings before it is stored. It is included with LiveKit Agent Observability at no additional cost.

Read more: https://t.co/kqJzMsCzuO

[dsa @dsa]

@pham_blnh lol

[LiveKit @livekit]

1/ Today we're launching Expressive mode in LiveKit Agents.

Most voice agents deliver every sentence in that same, upbeat register we all know and hate (including bad news). Expressive mode makes your agent sound like it registers what the caller is actually feeling.

[LiveKit @livekit]

Here's our take on benchmarks for voice: they're hard to get right, but critical if you're building humanlike AI. Our live benchmarks page is up now: pass rate on real agent scenarios, latency including the worst-case (p99) moments, side-by-side conversation comparison between models over time. Feedback welcome! https://t.co/z32pseDRbH

[dsa @dsa]

Waymo pick up and drop off is so bad.

[David Zhao @davidzh]

WARP is coming to LiveKit soon!

[LemonSlice @LemonSliceAI]

The YC Office Hours Simulator was a huge success! 

These were physical booths at Startup School where attendees could talk to AI avatars of the @ycombinator Partners. We interviewed over 100 attendees about their experience.

Here's a recap 👇️

1️⃣ The #1 complaint = people wished they could talk longer! Most conversations were 10min (the enforced time limit). There was a line of people waiting to talk to the avatars for the entire two-day conference
2️⃣ Some people wished the avatars were meaner or harsher. This was interesting!
3️⃣ Many people took notes (pen & paper, @meetgranola, or typing furiously) and said the conversation was genuinely helpful. Several folks waited in line for a 2nd or 3rd conversation :) 
4️⃣ People said the avatar aspect felt different than a chatbot. The "face-to-face" interaction helped them feel a stronger connection, pay more attention, and open up more. A few people even said they forgot it was AI! 
5️⃣ The magic moment = when people realized the avatars knew who they were and what they were working on (based on their conference application) 🪄

The "brains" for Office Hours Simulator was trained on hundreds of hours of real office hours. It truly simulated how each Partner talks and the types of questions they like to ask. 

Built by the one-and-only @snowmaker and YC software team (so impressive) 👏

Powered by: @lemonslice (live avatars), @elevenlabs @ElevenLabsDevs (voice AI), @livekit (webRTC infra), @deepgramai (voice AI), @ployai (animations), Hamming AI (testing), and many other great companies.

[dsa @dsa]

Mom: what do you think of Claude Tag?

Me: haven't gotten a chance to use it. I just heard @jack has a new thing in this direction, actually.

Mom: yeah Buzz, i know.

💀