Seed Round

Kotoba Technologies Raises $10M Seed

Kotoba Technologies raises $10M seed round led by Kindred Ventures to expand its real-time voice AI platform and speech models across East Asia.

by Ben Murray

Updated June 25, 2026

Kotoba Technologies Raises $10M Seed

Kotoba Technologies, based in San Francisco and Tokyo, is a developer of specialized speech AI models for East Asian languages. The company recently announced it has raised $10 million in additional seed funding, bringing its total funding to $23 million.

Investors

The funding round was led by Kindred Ventures. Additional participation in the round included Salesforce Ventures and Sony Innovation Fund.

Kotoba Technologies Use of Funds

Kotoba Technologies plans to use the new capital to advance its speech AI platform in three core areas. The company will further develop its speech-to-speech models to reduce latency and support broader use cases such as AI agents and smart devices. It also intends to dedicate resources to optimizing its Koto model for edge chips and expanding distribution across automobiles, electronics, and AI wearables. Finally, the company will scale the usability of the Koto ecosystem for global enterprise customers.

About Kotoba Technologies

Founded in 2023 by Cornell and University of Washington PhDs Noriyuki Kojima and Jungo Kasai, Kotoba Technologies focuses on state-of-the-art real-time speech AI models. Their proprietary model, Koto, is designed for high-performance recognition and synthesis in Japanese, Korean, and Chinese, powering various applications including AI agents, simultaneous translation, and voice interfaces for contact centers.