Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt invests in French AI startup Gradium

Gradium, a new startup developing voice models of artificial intelligence, has been launched in Paris. The company has raised $70 million in investments, and the main investors include the former CEO of Google and businessman Eric Schmidt, and French billionaire Xavier Niel, founder of the Iliad telecom company. About reports Bloomberg.

The round was led by FirstMark Capital and Eurazeo, with participation from DST Global, Amplify Partners, and businessman Rodolphe Saade.

Gradium was founded by engineers from Google, Meta, and Jane Street. The company creates tools for speech generation, voice tone modification, transcription, and speech recognition. Its technology is based on the developments of the Kyutai lab, in particular the Moshi model, which processes speech directly, without converting it to text.

Gradium officially launched in September 2025 and currently has eight employees. Their first voice product supports five languages – English, French, Spanish, German, and Portuguese. Gradium already has clients in the education, healthcare, gaming, and service industries, but does not disclose their names due to contractual obligations.

Recently, it became known that a startup with former employees of OpenAI and Meta will be headed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. In 2022, Billionaire Eric Schmidt met with Yermak and Reznikov in Kyiv. And in 2023, the former google CEO bought a yachtthe Russian oligarch abandoned the ship in the Caribbean.