One of France’s leading AI researchers is in talks to raise around $60 million from American and French investors for a new voice AI startup, according to two sources familiar with the deal.

The new company is the brainchild of Neil Zeghidour, a former Google Brain and Meta AI researcher who’d previously cofounded Paris-based AI research lab Kyutai. The lab, backed by $300 million from billionaires Eric Schimdt, Xavier Niel and French shipping giant CMA, has released several voice AI models, a multilingual chatbot called Moshi and live translation tool Hibiki. Now, Zeghidour is aiming to commercialize its tech through the new startup, called Gradium.

French corporate filings show that Zeghidour registered a new company in July, and has held talks with investors to raise around $60 million. Sources close to the deal say that Kyutai, a non-profit, will retain a stake in the new startup. Zeghidour said some of the details were inaccurate but did not respond to follow up questions.

Zeghidour is a renowned researcher in the space: while at Meta and Google Brain, he published dozens of papers on building AI models for speech recognition and the generation of speech and music.

But he’s up against stiff competition: Gradium will go head to head with London-based Elevenlabs, which raised at a $6.6 billion valuation earlier this year. Elevenlabs’s cofounder tweeted last month that the startup had booked over $200 million in annual recurring revenue from selling its voice generator to creators, media companies and increasingly startups and corporate giants that are replacing call centers with AI voice bots.

A growing crop of startups are racing to build tools using voice AI. Former Salesforce executive Bret Taylor’s Sierra, which raised at a $10 billion valuation in September, and Decagon which raised $131 million at a $1.5 billion valuation in June, are both focused on helping corporates build speaking AI customer service agents. Abridge, which is now valued at $5 billion, sells a transcription tool for doctors and medical professionals.

Gradium now joins a list of AI startups building out of the French capital, including Mistral, which just raised at a $10 billion valuation, and coding tool Poolside AI. Meta opened an AI research lab in the city over a decade ago but in recent years Google, OpenAI and Cohere have opened offices to tap into the technical talent emerging from France’s universities.