Rime's mission is to make voice AI sound and feel human.
Founded by linguists, engineers, and product experts, Rime blends advanced ML with deep linguistic and sociolinguistic insight to create ultra-realistic voices that breathe, laugh, code-switch, and carry the subtle rhythms of real speech. These voices build trust, empathy, and engagement in every interaction to drive business outcomes.
Rime was founded in 2022 by Lily Clifford (Stanford NLP PhD dropout), Brooke Larson (PhD linguist, ex-Amazon Alexa), and Ares Geovanos (Stanford engineer, product veteran). The team set out to move beyond robotic, over-polished speech toward genuine, human-like conversation.
They built an in-house recording studio in San Francisco, capturing the biggest proprietary data set of full-duplex, spontaneous speech including interruptions, laughter, and vocal disfluencies that became the foundation for Rime's models. Backed by Unusual Ventures, Cadenza Capital, Founders You Should Know, and additional angel investors, Rime now powers tens of millions of conversations monthly spanning industries from food service to healthcare.