A Solution for High-Bandwidth Data Transmission
A challenge for many tech companies is delivering high-bandwidth, multimodal data — for example, simultaneous audio and video — to users in real time without interruptions. Some firms build solutions in-house, but these often require a lot of upkeep and maintenance.
The Birth of LiveKit
To ease the burden, Russ d’Sa and David Zhao created LiveKit, an open source software package for building apps that can transmit real-time audio and video. They launched the project in 2021 and soon suspected it had business potential.
LiveKit’s Rapid Growth
It was a good hunch. LiveKit now has “more than 500 paying customers and over 100,000 developers across its cloud platform and open source products,” according to d’Sa. He also says it’s the “backbone for roughly 25% of 911 emergency calls in the U.S.” and is “used by large aerospace companies for launch and flight observation, Skydio for police drones teleoperation, and teams at Oracle and Adobe in various government applications.”
From Open Source to Cloud-Hosted Solution
It all started when “large companies like Spotify, Oracle, and Reddit were experimenting with LiveKit and asked us for a cloud-hosted version of it,” d’Sa told TechCrunch. “Think Cloudflare, but for media streaming.” So d’Sa, an early Twitter engineer, and Zhao, former director of engineering at Motorola, decided to turn LiveKit into a startup and launch a managed version of the project: LiveKit Cloud.
What LiveKit Offers
Today, LiveKit, which also powers OpenAI’s ChatGPT Voice Mode, offers SDKs, tools, and APIs that allow developers and companies to build streaming video and audio experiences. The startup’s customers include tech giants Spotify, Meta, and Microsoft, as well as Character AI, Speak, and Fanatics.
Future Plans
The current focus of the San Jose, California, company is growing its engineering and product teams — it employs around 50 people — and expanding its core infrastructure. LiveKit is also developing what d’Sa calls an “elastic agent compute service,” meaning a product that can deploy and automatically scale up or down voice “agents” like chatbots.
A New Kind of Cloud Provider
“It turns out what LiveKit is ultimately building is ‘AIWS’ — an AI-native cloud provider,” d’Sa said. “What Stripe did for payments, LiveKit is doing for communications.”
Financials
LiveKit’s financials are quite healthy in the meantime, d’Sa claims. Last year, the company’s run rate was over $10 million. Recently, LiveKit raised $45 million in a Series B round led by Altimeter, with participation from Redpoint Ventures and Hanabi Capital.
Conclusion
LiveKit has made significant progress in providing a solution for high-bandwidth data transmission, with its open source software package and cloud-hosted solution gaining traction among large companies and developers alike. With its focus on growing its engineering and product teams and expanding its core infrastructure, it will be interesting to see what the future holds for LiveKit.
FAQs
Q: What is LiveKit?
A: LiveKit is an open source software package for building apps that can transmit real-time audio and video.
Q: How many customers does LiveKit have?
A: LiveKit has more than 500 paying customers and over 100,000 developers across its cloud platform and open source products.
Q: What is LiveKit Cloud?
A: LiveKit Cloud is a managed version of the LiveKit project, designed to provide a cloud-hosted solution for media streaming.
Q: Who are LiveKit’s customers?
A: LiveKit’s customers include tech giants Spotify, Meta, and Microsoft, as well as Character AI, Speak, and Fanatics.
Q: What is LiveKit’s focus?
A: LiveKit’s current focus is growing its engineering and product teams and expanding its core infrastructure.
Q: How much funding has LiveKit raised?
A: LiveKit raised $45 million in a Series B round led by Altimeter, with participation from Redpoint Ventures and Hanabi Capital.
