AI Voice Startup Palabra Launches TTS Engine, Names New CTO

AI translation startup Palabra AI has had a busy April in 2026, with the launch of a new “streaming-native” text-to-speech (TTS) engine followed shortly by the appointment of Andrey Feldman as the company’s new CTO.

Founded in 2023 and headquartered in London, Palabra is focused on low-latency AI translation for voice applications. The company’s website advertises voice translation functionality in 60+ languages, claiming less than one second latency and 99% accuracy.

Palabra closed a USD 8.4m pre-seed funding round in August 2025. At the time, Artem Kukharenko, CEO and co-founder at Palabra, told Slator the funding would be used for “a new streaming-prediction model targeting up to 3x lower latency,” and that the company was targeting 100k minutes per month in usage, with a goal to reach 1 million minutes per month in 2026.

Since then, the company has grown, acquiring the multilingual AI communications startup Talo and announcing a collection of new voice translation offerings in November 2025.

Palabra says the new TTS engine is enabled with 8 available languages, “time to first answer ~100ms,” and voice cloning capability using only a 6-second sample. The announcement further states that they are seeking collaborators to test the new TTS engine’s capabilities.

New Leadership

Feldman is joining Palabra’s leadership team with “20+ years of experience building systems that handle massive amounts of data.”

Regarding Feldman’s background, Palabra’s CEO Artem Kukharenko told Slator, “his deep experience in building and scaling high-load real-time systems significantly strengthens our ability to deliver reliable, enterprise-grade solutions, especially for LSPs serving global clients.”

When Slator reached out to Feldman regarding his new role, he said, “I joined Palabra because I was excited by both the team’s quality and the level of in-house technology they have built. There is a rare concentration of top researchers and highly talented engineers here.” 

When asked about his thoughts on Palabra’s near-term plans, Feldman said, “my outlook for Palabra is very ambitious: we are building not just a breakthrough technology, but a platform that can serve multiple real-world scenarios, with the tools and documentation needed for seamless integration across use cases, including live streaming, events, or call translation.”