Boston-based voice intelligence startup Modulate has secured $25 million in a funding round led by Future Ventures, with participation from Hyperplane and Lakestar. This investment brings the company's total funding to $60 million. Previously, the startup raised $41 million at a valuation of approximately $170 million.
The company operates Velma, an audio-native AI platform that utilizes over 100 specialized models to analyze emotion, tone, intent, and synthetic speech. Modulate reports that Velma provides up to 2x higher accuracy and 7x fewer false positives than traditional large language models. The system currently processes over 10 million hours of audio monthly, with a lifetime total exceeding 600 million hours.
As of mid-2026, Modulate holds the top position on the Hugging Face Open ASR Leaderboard for transcription. Its deepfake detection technology achieves a 98.9% accuracy rate with a 1.1% equal error rate. The platform supports both real-time and batch processing for industries including healthcare, finance, gaming, and social media.
The company offers its deepfake detection API at a price of $0.25 per hour of analyzed audio, while the batch transcription API is priced at $0.03 per hour. Founded in 2017 by MIT alumni Carter Huffman and Mike Pappas, Modulate initially focused on real-time voice skin technology before expanding into compliance and enterprise-grade audio analysis.
