LiveKit

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.

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

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 industry

PRIMARYBPAMAJAB

Live Streaming & Webcasting Platforms

Business & Public Services/Web, Mobile & Digital Platforms/Media Streaming, Publishing & Content Platforms

SECONDARYMPACACAI

Enterprise & Professional Live Streaming Platforms (Webinars/Events)

Media, Entertainment & Sports/Digital Media & Content Platforms (Online Video, Podcasts, Creators)/Live Streaming Platforms (Gaming/IRL)

SECONDARYBPAMABAH

Social Audio & Live Community Platforms

Business & Public Services/Web, Mobile & Digital Platforms/Social Networks & Online Communities

Keywords

• Real-time communication infrastructure
• Voice AI platform
• WebRTC media server
• AI agent framework
• Video streaming infrastructure

Headquarters

HQ city

San Jose

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices5 records

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Technology or R&D, Personnel, Infrastructure, Marketing or Sales, Operations

Revenue model

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. Freemium / Free Tier: Free tier with 1,000 agent session minutes monthly to attract developers and enable prototyping before commercial deployment.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion2 records

Distribution channels5 records

Marketing channels9 records

Core 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

Named customers15 records

Segments5 records

Ideal customer profiles4 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

Yes

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration17 records

AI capability7 records

Feature7 records

Partnerships

Seven partnerships are on record, tiered core and flagship.

• GooglecoreTechnology or Integration · 10 June 2026Google'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.
• OpenAIflagshipTechnology or IntegrationOpenAI 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.
• DeepgramcoreTechnology or IntegrationDeepgram 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.
• CartesiacoreTechnology or IntegrationCartesia (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.
• CerebrascoreTechnology or IntegrationCerebras 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.
• TelnyxcoreChannel Partner/ Reseller/ DistributorTelnyx 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.
• CerebrascoreTechnology or IntegrationLiveKit 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

Direct 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

• Xx.com/livekitted
• GitHubgithub.com/livekit
• YouTubeyoutube.com/@livekit_io
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/livekitco

Compliance8 records

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles3 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds5 records

Investors7 records

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A1 record

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about LiveKit