Wispr Raises $280M Series B at $2B Valuation to Build Voice Layer for Software

Wispr Raises $280 Million Series B at $2 Billion Valuation

San Francisco-based AI voice startup Wispr has raised $280 million in Series B funding at a $2 billion valuation, led by Menlo Ventures, as the company expands its ambition from AI dictation to becoming a foundational voice layer for software and hardware.

The round brings Wispr's total funding to $361 million, less than 10 months after its previous financing.

Existing investors Notable Capital, NEA, Neo Ventures, 8VC, and MVP Ventures participated again, while Acrew, Forerunner, Goodwater, Peak XV, Together Fund, and PLUS Capital joined as new investors.

Founded by Tanay Kothari and Sahaj Garg, Wispr has built Wispr Flow, an AI-powered dictation platform that converts speech into formatted text across desktop and mobile applications.

Building a Voice Layer for Software

Wispr's original product, Flow, has expanded to more than 125,000 businesses and most of the Fortune 500.

The company says much of that adoption happened organically, with employees adopting the product individually rather than through traditional top-down enterprise sales.

CEO and co-founder Tanay Kothari says dictation was only the starting point, with Wispr now aiming to make voice a foundational interface beneath software and hardware.

The company's broader vision is to make speaking to software as natural and widely available as typing into a text box.

Launching Its Own Speech Model

Alongside the funding, Wispr launched Canto, its first proprietary speech model.

The company says Canto reduces word error rates from more than 30% to between 5% and 10% in noisy, real-world conditions.

Wispr expects the improved accuracy to reduce the number of dictations that require editing by 30% to 35%.

Until now, Wispr's technology has relied on speech models developed by other companies. Canto gives the company direct control over its core speech technology.

The model is being developed through Wispr's newly launched Advanced Interfaces Lab, led by chief scientist Ariya Rastrow, a founding member of Amazon's Alexa team who later worked on multimodal foundation models at Meta.

Competing in a Growing Voice AI Market

Wispr competes with AI dictation products including Willow, Monologue, Aqua, and Superwhisper.

The company also overlaps with meeting and productivity platforms such as Granola, Fireflies, and Read AI, although Wispr is positioning itself around a broader voice interface rather than meeting-specific workflows.

The company's strategy is based on the idea that voice could become a default way people interact with software across different applications and devices.

Capital Behind the Voice AI Opportunity

The funding comes as investor interest in voice and speech AI continues to grow.

ElevenLabs raised $500 million at an $11 billion valuation in February 2026, highlighting the scale of capital flowing into voice-related AI infrastructure.

The global voice recognition market is projected to grow from approximately $22 billion in 2026 to $62 billion by 2031, according to Mordor Intelligence.

Wispr will use its new capital to continue developing its voice technology and expand its position across enterprise software and other applications.

The company's larger challenge is proving that voice can become more than a faster way to enter text and instead evolve into a fundamental interface for interacting with software.