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Aura: Deepgram’s Revolutionary AI Vocalizes Agents

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Aura combines highly realistic voice models with a low-latency API to allow developers to build real-time, conversational AI agents. Backed by large language models (LLMs), these agents can then stand in for customer service agents in call centers and other customer-facing situations. Deepgram’s Aura combines human-like voice models that render extremely fast (typically in well under half a second) and, as Stephenson noted repeatedly, does so at a low price. “Everybody now is like: ‘hey, we need real-time voice AI bots that can perceive what is being said and that can understand and generate a response — and then they can speak back,'” he said. The Aura model, just like all of the company’s other models, were trained in-house.

“Revolutionizing Social Networking: Claim Secures $4M to Empower Users with Rewards and Trading Opportunities”

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Claim, a platform that is both a rewards app and a social network, has raised $4 million in a seed funding round led by Sequoia Capital. With Claim, users and their friends can earn cash back, exchange rewards and even redeem them together. The platform is a social network that aims to focus on real-world value and communal experiences rather than manufactured content and reposts. “We started Claim because we were really interested in what it meant to own something online,” Stephenson told TechCrunch in an interview. They then decided that users should be able to use the rewards with their friends or exchange them.