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  "markdown": "Founder and CEO.\n\nKaran Goel founded Cartesia, which builds real-time voice AI models including Sonic text to speech and Ink speech to text, and is its CEO. He met his co-founders as a PhD student at Stanford AI Lab, where he co-authored early work on structured state space models such as S4 with Albert Gu and Christopher Ré.\n\n- X: https://x.com/krandiash\n\n## What Karan builds\n\n- [Cartesia Ink](https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/cartesia-ink-stt.md), graded B, 68/100, in Speech-to-text. Cartesia's hosted speech-to-text API. Ink 2 transcribes live audio in five languages over a WebSocket with built-in turn detection, and the older Ink Whisper model transcribes uploaded files in about 100 languages. Founder and CEO, researched 2026-10-27.\n- [Cartesia Sonic TTS API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/cartesia-tts.md), graded B, 64/100, in Text-to-speech. Sonic text-to-speech, currently `sonic-3.6` in 44 languages, over `/tts/bytes`, `/tts/sse` and a WebSocket that takes streamed LLM text with contexts and word timestamps. Founder and CEO, researched 2026-10-27.\n- [Cartesia Voice Cloning API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/cartesia-voice-cloning.md), graded C, 59.7/100, in Voice cloning \u0026 custom voices. Instant voice clones for Sonic from 10 to 60 seconds of audio, and Pro Voice Clones fine-tuned on 30 minutes or more, trained in up to 3 hours. Founder and CEO, researched 2026-10-27.\n\n## Works with\n\n- [Albert Gu](https://www.anchorterminal.com/people/albert-gu/), Co-founder and Chief Scientist\n- [Arjun Desai](https://www.anchorterminal.com/people/arjun-desai/), Co-founder\n- [Brandon Yang](https://www.anchorterminal.com/people/brandon-yang/), Co-founder\n\n## Backed by\n\n- [Kleiner Perkins](https://www.anchorterminal.com/investors/kleiner-perkins/)\n- [Index Ventures](https://www.anchorterminal.com/investors/index-ventures/)\n- [Lightspeed Venture Partners](https://www.anchorterminal.com/investors/lightspeed-venture-partners/)\n- [Factory](https://www.anchorterminal.com/investors/factory/)\n- [Conviction](https://www.anchorterminal.com/investors/conviction/)\n- [General Catalyst](https://www.anchorterminal.com/investors/general-catalyst/)\n- [A* Capital](https://www.anchorterminal.com/investors/a-capital/)\n- [SV Angel](https://www.anchorterminal.com/investors/sv-angel/)\n\n## Questions\n\n### Who is Karan Goel?\n\nKaran Goel founded Cartesia, which builds real-time voice AI models including Sonic text to speech and Ink speech to text, and is its CEO. He met his co-founders as a PhD student at Stanford AI Lab, where he co-authored early work on structured state space models such as S4 with Albert Gu and Christopher Ré.\n\n### What does Cartesia make?\n\nAnchor Terminal lists Cartesia Ink, Cartesia Sonic TTS API + MCP and Cartesia Voice Cloning API + MCP from Cartesia. Cartesia's hosted speech-to-text API. Ink 2 transcribes live audio in five languages over a WebSocket with built-in turn detection, and the older Ink Whisper model transcribes uploaded files in about 100 languages.\n\n### Who has invested in Cartesia?\n\nThe sources our research read name Kleiner Perkins, Index Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Factory, Conviction, General Catalyst, A* Capital and SV Angel.\n\n### How are Karan's tools graded?\n\nCartesia Ink is graded B, 68 out of 100; Cartesia Sonic TTS API + MCP is graded B, 64 out of 100; Cartesia Voice Cloning API + MCP is graded C, 59.7 out of 100, on Anchor Terminal's benchmark, which scores every listing against the same checklist.\n\n## Sources\n\n- https://cartesia.ai/company\n- https://x.com/krandiash\n- https://x.com/_albertgu\n- https://www.linkedin.com/in/arjun-desai-4a731ba4\n- https://x.com/bclyang\n- https://www.cartesia.ai/company\n- https://www.cartesia.ai/\n- https://www.linkedin.com/company/cartesia-ai/\n- https://docs.cartesia.ai/\n- https://help.cartesia.ai/\n\nThese are the people building the tools we list, named for their public role in the company or project behind a listing, from public pages, with the date it was researched. They don't work for Anchor Terminal (our own team is on the about page, /about/#author). We show public roles, public profiles and what the listing pages show, nothing private. To correct something, send an about or a photo, or have a page removed, write to privacy@anchorterminal.com.\n",
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