LiveKit
LiveKit is an open-source developer platform that provides WebRTC-based real-time voice, video, and physical AI infrastructure, with managed cloud serving customers such as OpenAI, Salesforce, Tesla, and xAI to build and scale AI agents in production.
- Company typePrivate
- Founded2021
- HeadquartersSan Jose, United States
- Headcount101–250
- GTM typeB2B
- OfferingSoftware
What LiveKit does
LiveKit is a developer infrastructure platform for building, deploying, and scaling real-time voice, video, and physical AI agents. Founded in 2021 and headquartered in San Jose, California, the company provides a WebRTC-based stack built around three layers: (1) the open-source LiveKit Media Server (Apache 2.0), a Selective Forwarding Unit (SFU) architecture capable of horizontally scaling to 100,000+ concurrent users per session; (2) the open-source LiveKit Agents SDK (Python and Node.js), which packages automatic turn detection with 85% accuracy, interruption handling, and multimodal interaction logic; and (3) LiveKit Cloud, the managed platform offering sub-1000ms global latency across 16+ regions, a multi-cloud footprint (GCP, Oracle, DigitalOcean), an inference gateway brokering requests to leading STT/LLM/TTS providers with a zero-retention data posture, SIP and telephony integrations, end-to-end encryption, recording, stream ingestion, and full-stack observability. The company's flagship production deployment is OpenAI's ChatGPT Advanced Voice Mode, which serves 800+ million weekly users on LiveKit Cloud, alongside other named customers including xAI, Salesforce, Tesla, Grab, Skydio, Headspace, Polymath Robotics, Retell AI, Podium, Playback, and Assort Health across conversational AI, healthcare, financial services, emergency services, robotics, and drones.
LiveKit monetizes through a freemium and usage-based hybrid. The free tier provides 1,000 agent session minutes per month to drive developer adoption; LiveKit Cloud charges subscription and usage-based fees for agent sessions, API calls, data egress, and telephony, with custom enterprise pricing for Scale and Enterprise tiers that bundle SAML-based SSO, dedicated SLAs, a HIPAA BAA, and dedicated support. Active certifications include SOC 2 Type II, GDPR, CCPA/CPRA, EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework, and HIPAA eligibility, with ISO 27001, ISO 27018, and PCI DSS in progress. Distribution combines product-led growth via open-source adoption (livekit/livekit at ~19.4K GitHub stars, livekit/agents at ~11.1K stars, 1M+ monthly Agents SDK downloads, 100K+ developers) with direct enterprise field sales, including Forward Deployed Engineers (NYC) and SDRs in San Francisco and London, plus a channel reseller arrangement with Telnyx. LiveKit has raised approximately $183M to date across multiple rounds, culminating in a $100M Series C in January 2026 at a $1B post-money valuation led by Index Ventures, with participation from Salesforce Ventures, Hanabi Capital, Altimeter Capital, and Redpoint Ventures. Co-founders Russ d'Sa (CEO) and David Zhao continue to lead the company.
LiveKit firmographics
Firmographics- Name
- LiveKit
- Legal name
- LiveKit Incorporated
- Website
- https://livekit.com/
- Company type
- Private
- Founded year
- 2021
- Operating status
- Operating
- Headcount range
- 101–250 employees
- Short description
- LiveKit is an open-source developer platform that provides WebRTC-based real-time voice, video, and physical AI infrastructure, with managed cloud serving customers such as OpenAI, Salesforce, Tesla, and xAI to build and scale AI agents in production.
- Ownership category
- akta.pro rank
LiveKit industry classification
Industry- Product category
- Real-time Communication Infrastructure
- NAICS
- Software Publishers (5132), Computing Infrastructure Providers, Data Processing, Web Hosting, and Related Services (51821)
- SIC
- Services-Prepackaged Software (7372)
- akta.pro primary industry
- Live Streaming & Webcasting Platforms (BPAMAJAB)
- akta.pro secondary industries
- Enterprise & Professional Live Streaming Platforms (Webinars/Events) (MPACACAI), Social Audio & Live Community Platforms (BPAMABAH)
Keywords
Where LiveKit is headquartered
LocationHeadquarters
- HQ city
- San Jose
- HQ country
- United States
- HQ region
- North America
Offices5 records
Markets served
LiveKit business model
Business model- GTM type
- B2B
- Offering type
- Software
- Cost components
- Technology or R&D, Personnel, Infrastructure, Marketing or Sales, Operations
Revenue model
- Cloud Platform Subscription and Usage Fees: LiveKit Cloud charges subscription and/or usage-based fees for access to the managed real-time infrastructure platform. Free tier provides 1,000 agent session minutes monthly. Enterprise tiers offer higher limits, SSO, SLA guarantees, and custom pricing.
- Usage-Based (Pay-as-you-go) Fees: Usage-based charges for API calls, agent sessions, data egress, and telephony. Specific tiers and per-unit pricing are available in the LiveKit Cloud Portal with additional usage-based fees for AI & Agent services.
- Freemium / Free Tier: Free tier with 1,000 agent session minutes monthly to attract developers and enable prototyping before commercial deployment.
Pricing tiers
| Model | Billing | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Freemium | Monthly | Free tier for developers and prototyping |
| Usage-based | Monthly | Pay-as-you-go usage-based pricing |
| Subscription | Annual | Enterprise / Custom tier with full features |
Go-to-market motion2 records
Distribution channels5 records
Marketing channels9 records
LiveKit product offering
Product offeringCore offering
LiveKit provides an open-source framework and developer platform for building, testing, deploying, scaling, and observing voice, video, and physical AI agents in production. The platform combines an open-source WebRTC media server (Apache 2.0) with a managed cloud platform that includes an Agents SDK, an inference gateway brokering requests to third-party STT/LLM/TTS providers, SIP and telephony integrations, recording/streaming services, and full-stack observability. LiveKit Cloud powers billions of calls annually and underpins OpenAI's ChatGPT Advanced Voice Mode.
Product overview
LiveKit is an open-source framework and developer platform for building, testing, deploying, scaling, and observing voice, video, and physical AI agents in production. The platform consists of three interconnected layers: (1) the LiveKit Agents SDK — an open-source Python/Node.js framework for building AI agents, (2) the LiveKit Media Server — open-source WebRTC infrastructure (Apache 2.0) providing real-time audio/video transport via SFU architecture, and (3) LiveKit Cloud — a managed cloud platform offering Agent Hosting, LiveKit Inference gateway (routing to third-party STT/LLM/TTS providers), SIP/telephony integrations, Egress recording, and Agent Observability. The company targets enterprises and developers building real-time AI applications, with OpenAI's ChatGPT Advanced Voice Mode as a flagship customer. Compliance includes SOC 2 Type II (active), HIPAA eligibility, GDPR alignment, and CCPA compliance. Notable customers include OpenAI, xAI, Salesforce, Tesla, Grab, and Polymath Robotics.
Differentiator
Problem solved
Functional benefit
Products and services
- LiveKit Agent Platform The primary developer platform for building, testing, deploying, scaling, and observing voice, video, and physical AI agents in production. Combines the open-source Agents SDK with managed cloud infrastructure for real-time AI agent applications, targeted at developers and enterprise engineering teams.
- LiveKit Agents SDK Open-source Python/Node.js framework for building voice AI agents. Provides AgentSession class for configuring STT, LLM, and TTS providers with built-in turn detection and interruption handling. Downloaded over 1 million times monthly, enabling developers to create voice agents that function as real-time participants in WebRTC sessions.
- LiveKit Cloud Managed cloud platform for deploying and scaling LiveKit agents globally. Offers sub-1000ms global latency, 99.999% uptime, and multi-region deployment across the US, EU, India, and other regions. Provides Agent Hosting, LiveKit Inference gateway, SIP/telephony, Egress recording, and Agent Observability as managed services.
- LiveKit Media Server Open-source WebRTC server (Apache 2.0) providing real-time audio and video infrastructure. Supports SFU (Selective Forwarding Unit) architecture for horizontal scaling to 100,000 concurrent users per session, used as the foundation for all LiveKit products and deployed by enterprises worldwide.
Quantifiable outcome
- 2.5 billion+ calls handled annually on LiveKit Cloud
- +5 more outcomes
Companies that use LiveKit
Customer profileNamed customers15 records
Segments5 records
Ideal customer profiles4 records
LiveKit technology and API
TechnologyTechnology focussed Yes
API detail
- Has API
- Yes
- API docs
- API detail
Core technology
AI maturity
App detail
Integration17 records
AI capability7 records
Feature7 records
LiveKit partnerships and signals
Strategic signalPartnerships
Seven partnerships are on record, tiered core and flagship.
- GooglecoreGoogle's Gemini 3.5 Live Translation API lists LiveKit as an API partner alongside Agora, Fishjam, and Pipecat. LiveKit is integrated into Google's real-time speech translation ecosystem. Also uses Google Cloud as infrastructure provider.
- OpenAIflagshipOpenAI built ChatGPT's Advanced Voice Mode on LiveKit Cloud infrastructure. LiveKit powers voice interactions for ChatGPT's 800+ million weekly users. This is LiveKit's flagship reference customer and the most prominent demonstration of its real-time voice AI capabilities.
- DeepgramcoreDeepgram is the default speech-to-text provider in LiveKit Agents (stt='deepgram/nova-3' in examples). Deepgram is integrated as a primary STT option in LiveKit's inference gateway.
- CartesiacoreCartesia (sonic-3 TTS) is the default text-to-speech provider in LiveKit Agents examples. Cartesia is listed as a primary TTS option and HIPAA-compliant inference model in LiveKit Cloud. Also co-published the State of Voice AI 2024 report referencing LiveKit.
- CerebrascoreCerebras named LiveKit as a customer in its AI inference announcement, using Cerebras for real-time AI applications with significant latency reductions. Cerebras is integrated as an inference sub-processor in LiveKit's platform.
- TelnyxcoreTelnyx launched 'LiveKit on Telnyx,' a fully hosted platform enabling developers to deploy LiveKit voice AI agents on Telnyx-owned infrastructure. Offers 50% lower STT/TTS costs than LiveKit Cloud with sub-200ms round-trip latency and waives session fees during beta.
- CerebrascoreLiveKit is listed as a Cerebras customer using its AI inference infrastructure for real-time AI applications. Cerebras claims LiveKit benefits from significant latency reductions using CS-3 wafer-scale engine with 7,000x more memory bandwidth than Nvidia H100.
Scale indicators15 records
Recent moves6 records
Expansion highlights8 records
LiveKit competitors and assessment
Company assessmentDirect peers
- 100ms: 100ms.live offers live video and audio SDKs targeting similar developer and SaaS customer use cases, including real-time collaboration and AI-powered applications. It is a direct comparable for LiveKit's SFU-based developer platform serving real-time voice and video workloads.
- Agora: Agora is a direct competitor providing real-time voice, video, and chat infrastructure via WebRTC. Agora is listed alongside LiveKit as an API partner in Google's Gemini 3.5 Live Translation ecosystem, indicating direct overlap in the realtime AI transport layer serving voice agent and live translation use cases.
- Daily.co: Daily.co provides a WebRTC SDK and managed real-time video/audio APIs aimed at developers, closely matching LiveKit's product-led growth and open-source-adjacent positioning. Daily.co directly competes for the same developer and startup customer segment building video-first collaboration and AI applications on top of WebRTC infrastructure.
Broad incumbents
- Twilio: Twilio is the broadest CPaaS incumbent offering programmable voice, video (via Programmable Video / WebRTC), and AI-powered communications tooling. While Twilio's product suite is much wider than LiveKit's, the Twilio Voice and Video APIs directly overlap with LiveKit's core offering, making Twilio the most significant incumbent competitor for enterprise voice AI deployments.
- Dolby.io: Dolby.io provides real-time communication APIs for voice, video, and audio processing, with strengths in media quality and noise suppression. Dolby.io's Real-time Streaming and Communications APIs overlap with LiveKit's video/audio transport layer, particularly for media-quality-sensitive enterprise use cases such as broadcasting and conferencing.
- Vonage (Ericsson): Vonage (owned by Ericsson) provides CPaaS APIs for voice, video, and messaging targeting enterprise communications use cases. Vonage's Voice and Video APIs overlap with LiveKit's SIP/telephony and real-time video offerings, particularly for enterprise customers seeking carrier-grade communications infrastructure.
- Bandwidth: Bandwidth provides communications platform APIs for voice and messaging, including SIP trunking and telephony infrastructure used by voice AI applications. Bandwidth competes with LiveKit's SIP/telephony integration layer and is a credible comparable for the underlying carrier-grade communications layer that voice agents depend on.
- Amazon Chime SDK: Amazon Chime SDK is AWS's real-time communication SDK providing voice, video, and screen-sharing capabilities tightly integrated with the AWS ecosystem. As a broad incumbent offering bundled with AWS infrastructure, Chime SDK directly competes with LiveKit Cloud for enterprise customers already standardized on AWS for cloud services.
Emerging players
- Pipecat: Pipecat is an emerging open-source framework for building voice and multimodal AI agents, listed alongside LiveKit in Google's Gemini 3.5 Live Translation announcement. Pipecat competes with LiveKit's Agents SDK in the developer-framework layer for AI agent orchestration, with overlapping use cases around STT/LLM/TTS pipeline composition.
- Fishjam: Fishjam is mentioned as a peer to LiveKit in Google's Gemini Live Translation ecosystem and provides real-time media infrastructure for AI applications. As an emerging player with partial overlap in the voice/video AI agent space, Fishjam represents a direct comparable for LiveKit's multimodal agent platform.
Market position
Strengths4 records
Weaknesses4 records
Competitive moat7 records
Key risks6 records
Key highlights6 records
Customer concentration
LiveKit social profiles
Digital presenceLiveKit compliance and trust
Trust signalCompliance8 records
LiveKit financial estimates
Financial estimateRevenue estimate
Valuation estimate
LiveKit leadership team
Management profileNumber of profiles
Profiles3 records
LiveKit funding detail
Funding detailFunding overview
Funding rounds5 records
Investors7 records
Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
LiveKit M&A and investment
M&A and investmentM&A1 record
Investments
M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Frequently asked questions about LiveKit
What does LiveKit do?
LiveKit provides an open-source framework and developer platform for building, testing, deploying, scaling, and observing voice, video, and physical AI agents in production. The platform combines an open-source WebRTC media server (Apache 2.0) with a managed cloud platform that includes an Agents SDK, an inference gateway brokering requests to third-party STT/LLM/TTS providers, SIP and telephony integrations, recording/streaming services, and full-stack observability. LiveKit Cloud powers billions of calls annually and underpins OpenAI's ChatGPT Advanced Voice Mode.
Is LiveKit a public or private company?
LiveKit is a private company. It is classified as venture growth investor backed and is currently operating.
When was LiveKit founded?
LiveKit was founded in 2021. It employs 101 to 250 people.
Where is LiveKit based?
LiveKit is headquartered in San Jose, United States, in the North America region.
How does LiveKit make money?
Three revenue lines are on record. Cloud Platform Subscription and Usage Fees are the primary driver. The others are usage-Based (Pay-as-you-go) Fees and freemium / Free Tier.
Who are LiveKit's main competitors?
Direct peers on record are 100ms, Agora and Daily.co. Broad incumbents are Twilio, Dolby.io, Vonage (Ericsson), Bandwidth and Amazon Chime SDK. Emerging players are Pipecat and Fishjam.
Does LiveKit have an API?
Yes. LiveKit provides a public API for building, testing, deploying, and scaling voice, video, and physical AI agents. The API includes access to LiveKit Cloud for deploying and scaling agents, LiveKit Inference for routing requests to third-party STT, LLM, and TTS providers, SIP and telephony integrations, Egress for recording, and Agent Observability features. The platform supports JWT-based authentication and real-time WebSocket connections for voice AI applications. Developer documentation is at docs.livekit.io.
What industry is LiveKit in?
LiveKit's product category is Real-time Communication Infrastructure. Its primary akta.pro industry code is BPAMAJAB, Live Streaming & Webcasting Platforms, with a secondary code of MPACACAI, Enterprise & Professional Live Streaming Platforms (Webinars/Events). Its NAICS code is 5132 and its SIC code is 7372.