India startup aims to compete with OpenAI in crowded voice arena
Murf AI has launched Falcon 2, a text-to-speech model designed to deliver human-like voices at lower costs and faster speeds. Priced at $0.01 per generated minute, the model has outperformed some offerings from OpenAI and other global players in independent benchmarks, targeting enterprise use cases such as call centres, banks and airlines.
A Bangalore-based startup, Murf AI, has entered the competitive AI voice market with its Falcon 2 text-to-speech model, which outperforms established competitors like OpenAI and ElevenLabs. The Falcon 2, publicly available since August 20, received higher scores in benchmarks from Artificial Analysis compared to some platforms from more heavily-funded companies.
Priced at $0.01 per generated minute, it is significantly cheaper than its competitors, making it an attractive option for call centers, banks, and airlines seeking to handle large volumes of customer communications. The startup, founded in 2020 by former Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur alumni Sneha Roy, Ankur Edkie, and Divyanshu Pandey, has over 10 million users in 300 companies, including Honeywell, Cisco, Pfizer, VMware, Nestle, and Air France-KLM.
Murf AI focuses on balancing natural-sounding speech with faster speeds and lower prices, supporting 150 voices in more than 35 languages. The company's engineering team developed the platform to tackle real-time voice AI challenges, providing over 10,000 concurrent calls and offering cloud support for data storage in 11 geographies.
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