# Cartesia raises $64M Series A led by Kleiner Perkins and launches Sonic 2.0

Canonical page: https://technooptimist.io/stories/cartesia-raises-64m-series-a-led-by-kleiner-perkins-and-launches-sonic-c493a296
Date: 11 Mar 2025
About: [Cartesia](https://technooptimist.io/companies/cartesia.md) · [Sonic](https://technooptimist.io/ai/sonic.md)
Original source: https://cartesia.ai/blog/series-a

Cartesia raised $64 million led by Kleiner Perkins, for $91 million raised in total, and released Sonic 2.0 on its state space architecture. The model is twice the size of the first Sonic yet faster: about 90 ms to first audio, 40 ms for the Turbo version.

## Key facts

- In blind tests on 100 held-out voices, 1.5x as many people preferred Sonic 2.0 over the next-best provider (company test).
- Added a voice changer and infill for editing words inside existing audio.
- Founded out of Stanford's AI Lab in 2023 by Karan Goel, Albert Gu, Arjun Desai and Brandon Yang.

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