# Karan Goel

> Karan Goel is founder and CEO. Cartesia Ink, Cartesia Sonic TTS API + MCP and Cartesia Voice Cloning API + MCP on Anchor Terminal, with grades, an about and public profiles.

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- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/people/karan-goel/index.md (~1,250 tokens)
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- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (the whole catalogue as tools, no key)
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)
- Updated: 2026-10-28

Founder and CEO.

Karan 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.

- X: https://x.com/krandiash

## What Karan builds

- [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.
- [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.
- [Cartesia Voice Cloning API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/cartesia-voice-cloning.md), graded C, 59.7/100, in Voice cloning & 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.

## Works with

- [Albert Gu](https://www.anchorterminal.com/people/albert-gu/), Co-founder and Chief Scientist
- [Arjun Desai](https://www.anchorterminal.com/people/arjun-desai/), Co-founder
- [Brandon Yang](https://www.anchorterminal.com/people/brandon-yang/), Co-founder

## Backed by

- [Kleiner Perkins](https://www.anchorterminal.com/investors/kleiner-perkins/)
- [Index Ventures](https://www.anchorterminal.com/investors/index-ventures/)
- [Lightspeed Venture Partners](https://www.anchorterminal.com/investors/lightspeed-venture-partners/)
- [Factory](https://www.anchorterminal.com/investors/factory/)
- [Conviction](https://www.anchorterminal.com/investors/conviction/)
- [General Catalyst](https://www.anchorterminal.com/investors/general-catalyst/)
- [A* Capital](https://www.anchorterminal.com/investors/a-capital/)
- [SV Angel](https://www.anchorterminal.com/investors/sv-angel/)

## Questions

### Who is Karan Goel?

Karan 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.

### What does Cartesia make?

Anchor 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.

### Who has invested in Cartesia?

The sources our research read name Kleiner Perkins, Index Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Factory, Conviction, General Catalyst, A* Capital and SV Angel.

### How are Karan's tools graded?

Cartesia 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.

## Sources

- https://cartesia.ai/company
- https://x.com/krandiash
- https://x.com/_albertgu
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/arjun-desai-4a731ba4
- https://x.com/bclyang
- https://www.cartesia.ai/company
- https://www.cartesia.ai/
- https://www.linkedin.com/company/cartesia-ai/
- https://docs.cartesia.ai/
- https://help.cartesia.ai/

These 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.

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