TechFlow reports on December 9 that, according to Fortune, Alexis Conneau, former head of speech research at OpenAI and lead developer of ChatGPT's voice feature, has launched a new startup called WaveForms, raising $40 million in seed funding from Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). Co-founded with business strategy expert Coralie Lamaitre, the company focuses on developing Emotional General Intelligence (EGI), aiming to build audio LLMs capable of understanding subtle vocal nuances such as tone, intonation, and accent.
Conneau was originally recruited by Ilya Sutskever, co-founder and chief scientist at OpenAI, to build ChatGPT’s voice functionality from the ground up. Although the feature sparked controversy for its resemblance to actress Scarlett Johansson’s voice, Conneau emphasized it was not intentional mimicry. When he left OpenAI in September, he posted on X (formerly Twitter): "After building #Her at OpenAI, I’ve decided to start a new company."
WaveForms aims to push the boundaries of audio AI. Conneau believes audio is the primary emotional and social layer for AI. Unlike existing voice assistants like Alexa and Siri, WaveForms will focus on developing audio LLMs that capture emotional subtleties and understand conversational context—for instance, detecting a student’s frustration in an educational setting and responding with greater patience. While companies like OpenAI, Google, and Meta concentrate on AGI, WaveForms will specialize in audio intelligence and emotional interaction, seeking to avoid the problematic AI relationships depicted in sci-fi films like Her.
