# Deepgram

> Deepgram sells speech-to-text, text-to-speech and voice-agent APIs. Nova-3, Flux, Flux TTS, pricing, self-hosting and funding as of October 2026.

Source: https://metavert.io/deepgram  
Published: 2026-10-21  
Updated: 2026-10-21

**Deepgram** is a voice-AI company that sells speech-to-text, text-to-speech and voice-agent APIs to developers. It was founded in 2015 by Scott Stephenson, its CEO, and a fellow physicist: they had applied machine learning to waveforms from a dark-matter detector before turning to deep learning for audio at the University of Michigan. On January 13, 2026, Deepgram raised a $130 million Series C at a $1.3 billion valuation, led by AVP, which brought its total funding to more than $215 million. It said more than 1,300 organizations build on its APIs, and Stephenson told TechCrunch the company had been cash-flow positive the previous year. With the round it bought OfOne, a Y Combinator startup that takes drive-through orders by voice.

### Products (October 2026)

| Product | What it does | Launched |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Nova-3 | Batch and streaming [speech recognition](https://metavert.io/speech-recognition), with keyterm prompting for up to about 100 domain terms; medical and pharma variants | February 12, 2025; Nova-3 Pharma September 17, 2026 |
| Flux | Streaming recognition for voice agents that decides with a model, not a silence timer, when a speaker has finished a turn | October 2, 2025; Flux Multilingual GA in ten languages April 29, 2026 |
| Flux TTS and Aura-2 | [Text-to-speech](https://metavert.io/text-to-speech) for agents; Flux TTS added pause markers and IPA pronunciation overrides in September 2026 | Flux TTS August 12, 2026 |
| Voice Agent API | Recognition, an LLM and speech output in one API | $0.075 a minute pay-as-you-go |

Deepgram's speed claims center on Flux, which it says makes end-of-turn decisions in under 400 milliseconds, so an agent can reply quickly without cutting people off. That's a vendor figure. At list prices on October 20, 2026, Nova-3 cost $0.0043 a minute for pre-recorded audio (about $0.26 an hour) and $0.0048 a minute streaming, and Flux English $0.0065 a minute. Diarization, redaction and keyterms are priced as add-ons.

### Deployment

Deepgram offers more ways to keep audio in-house than most speech APIs. Enterprise customers can self-host its models in Docker or Kubernetes, or run them through Amazon SageMaker. It runs regional endpoints in the EU and Australia, and an India endpoint went generally available on September 15, 2026. Its October 1, 2026 self-hosted release removed Whisper support and added watermarking of Flux TTS output. That flexibility suits contact centers, healthcare and public-sector buyers with [data-sovereignty](https://metavert.io/data-sovereignty) rules.

### How It Compares

Deepgram's natural rival is [AssemblyAI](https://metavert.io/assemblyai). At pay-as-you-go list prices, AssemblyAI is cheaper for batch transcription and stronger on multi-speaker, code-switched recordings. Deepgram is cheaper for streaming, has its own text-to-speech and offers more deployment options, which makes it a common base for [conversational AI](https://metavert.io/conversational-ai) and phone agents. [ElevenLabs](https://metavert.io/elevenlabs) and [Cartesia](https://metavert.io/cartesia) compete on the voice-output side. Open models such as [Whisper](https://metavert.io/whisper) and NVIDIA's [Parakeet](https://metavert.io/parakeet) compete for teams willing to run recognition themselves. Every vendor publishes benchmarks it wins, so a blind test on a few hours of your own audio is the only reliable guide. See [Deepgram vs AssemblyAI](https://metavert.io/compare/deepgram-vs-assemblyai) for the detailed comparison.

## Related Topics

- [Deepgram vs AssemblyAI](https://metavert.io/compare/deepgram-vs-assemblyai) — The two independent speech-to-text APIs compared
- [Speech Recognition (ASR)](https://metavert.io/speech-recognition) — How modern recognizers work and are measured
- [Conversational AI](https://metavert.io/conversational-ai) — Where Flux's turn detection matters
- [Text-to-Speech and AI Voiceover](https://metavert.io/text-to-speech) — The output side of a voice agent
- [Speaker Diarization](https://metavert.io/speaker-diarization) — Who spoke when
- [Whisper vs Parakeet](https://metavert.io/compare/whisper-vs-parakeet) — The open-model alternative
- [ElevenLabs vs Cartesia](https://metavert.io/compare/elevenlabs-vs-cartesia) — Rival voice-output vendors
- [Speech & Voice AI](https://metavert.io/speech-voice-ai) — The broader field

## Further Reading

- [Deepgram raises $130M at a $1.3B valuation](https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/13/deepgram-raises-130m-at-1-3b-valuation-and-buys-a-yc-ai-startup) — TechCrunch, January 2026
- [Deepgram changelog](https://developers.deepgram.com/changelog) — Nova-3, Flux TTS, self-hosted and regional releases
- [Flux Multilingual](https://deepgram.com/learn/deepgram-launches-flux-multilingual-press-release) — Deepgram; general availability in ten languages, April 2026
- [Deepgram pricing](https://deepgram.com/pricing) — per-minute rates and add-ons
- [About Deepgram](https://deepgram.com/company/about/) — the company's founding story